


The Mark of Fen'Harel, a Dalish Fable

by Keturagh



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Elvhenan, Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Cocky and Hot-Blooded, Elvhenan, F/M, Fate & Destiny, Forbidden Love, Slow Burn, Solavellan, Solavellan Prequel, Soulmarks, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Story within a Story, Touch-Starved, Unrequited Love, Young Fen'Harel, Young Solas, the happiest ending i am capable of writing for this pairing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-06 14:41:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 28,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11038266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keturagh/pseuds/Keturagh
Summary: In ancient Elvhenan where the Evanuris and Forgotten Ones are kings and queens of the Elvhen high courts, Fen'Harel is a changeling prince of the Forgotten Ones raised by Mythal. Fen'Harel leads armies in Mythal's name, but he longs to manifest the mark that will lead him to hisvhenan. But when Mythal gives him an ultimatum, the young king will seek his heart in forbidden places, setting into motion the events that will not only rend the worlds asunder, but may also separate him from his one true love forever.





	1. Let me tell you a story about Fen’Harel, the Dread Wolf

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FyreinFlair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyreinFlair/gifts).



> This minific nicknamed the 'Fae AU' was a giveaway prize for [@youaremynewdream](http://youaremynewdream.tumblr.com) on tumblr! Thank you for prompting me with this setting and plot, and I hope Fen'Harel's journey is everything you hoped for. ^.^ Thank you to [@redinkofshame](http://redinkofshame.tumblr.com) for superb beta-ing. This fic would be a mess without you and [you are amazing](http://archiveofourown.org/users/RedInkOfShame/pseuds/RedInkOfShame). ^.^;  
> \--

Fen’Harel remembered the first time he witnessed a joining. 

He remembered the way the magic gathered in the room. How it had felt on his skin, like gentle lightning tickling the hairs on his neck. The sharp smell of rain filled the air. The light in the room seemed to soften, and within the stone walls of the palace small wisps of light had winked, white and green and blue, almost like stars pulled down to earth.

The visiting noble was driven to his knees by the weight of the spell on his skin. His fine silks were crumpled under his shuddering form. He crushed his hat in his hands, and all stood back in a respectful circle as the spell was wrought. Blue fire spread across his face, but he did not cry out. He trembled, and Fen’Harel remembered watching his tears drop to the floor.

Then the fire had faded. The scent and sensation of the most ancient of Elvhen magicks seeped away, returning the world to normal. The man had stood and tried to fix his hat with shaking hands.

“Well joined, Ser,” Mythal had announced, and a cheer rose from the crowd.

He had left that night on the fast steed Mythal had gifted him, along with a dozen soldiers from her retinue to see him safely to his love.

He had left with the blood magic mark like the triumphant spray of a griffon’s wing over his cheek, eyes, and brow. A stunning mark, and one now shared, somewhere, by the heart that lived outside his body. Fen’Harel had snuck to the ramparts of Mythal’s bower and watched the company ride out. Their mounts thundered from the yard, the noble’s cape billowing behind him as he charged where his heart’s song led him. Halfway down the path he veered up a hill. He leapt into the Eluvian standing at the crest of the hill and the soldiers followed behind him two abreast. Each horse jumped as it passed into the mirror, white hooves and black tails flying. The company disappeared into the Fade. Fen’Harel watched the surface of the mirror ripple for a long time. It shimmered with the gold and red of the sunset.

He remembered gripping the stones so hard that his hands were stiff and cold when night fell, and he couldn’t feel them on the ladder as he snuck back down to the main hall. 

Tradition allowed three years for the mark to manifest once a person entered their joining season.

Those who did not manifest the mark leading the way to their heart served in the retinues of the Honored Elders; Evanuris and Forgotten Ones, the kings and queens who ruled all of Elvhenan.

A woman whose skin bore no sign could find her strength instead in service to Mythal as a warrior of the arcane arts. The scholars of Elgar’nan’s retinue were all postulants who had waited only a year into their season before anxiously devoting their lives to study. For whom among the People could be trusted to devote themselves with whole intention to the Evanuris? Only those whose hearts lived within them. Only a person whose soul was not split with another.

Three years after the advent of their joining season, all Elvhen lacking their mark were brought before the Honored Elders to be devoted to their service. Once the mark of the Honored was cast by magic across their skin, a person’s heart could never sing for another. In reverence to the monarchs of the kingdoms of Elvhenan, postulants knelt and chanted hymns of praise while the mark of the ruler they honored was writ in blood upon their brow: by this sign, these incomplete elves at last became whole.

Fen’Harel had never questioned the practice as a child. When he was young and still untested in battle he sat on the ground at Mythal’s knee while her newest servants had accepted the geas of her mark.

Now, many hundreds of years later, Fen’Harel knelt at the edge of the great ice sea and listened to the glassy crinkle of the shore.

He had been so certain as a child that when his joining season came upon him, his mark would manifest at once. He would have his love in his arms that very day. He would braid their hair and show them Mythal’s palace, hugging them close in dark corners. And perhaps, tilting up their chin, he would gaze at their lips…

His mind never wandered much further than that, not when he was a boy. He had been curious, but had mainly only dreamt of how warm it must be to be held by another. Mythal was the only person who might have held him. As he’d grown older he’d realized that she regarded him more as a valuable commodity than as any true adopted son; the intrigues of court had been her affections. When she touched him it was always to correct, to punish, or control. He wondered very much what it would feel like to be held and to hold another in his arms.

His joining season had come and the three years had gone.

As a prince of the Forgotten Ones, there had been no mere tradition that could bind Fen’Harel into the service of another monarch. And no royal had ever passed their joining season without manifesting a mark. His skin remained bare, and he continued to hope.

Then three centuries had gone. Finally ascending to the throne of his kingdom, without a mark of joining Fen’Harel could not be allowed rule - these were the machinations of Anaris, who was loathe to relinquish the power she had enjoyed during Fen’Harel’s childhood as a changeling prince in Mythal’s care. Anaris arranged to rule the lands of Fen’Harel by proxy while Fen’Harel remained in Mythal’s bower.

Fen’Harel commanded an army under Mythal, but having no mark himself he refused to mark his postulants with any geas of blood.

The centuries crept by. Fen’Harel could have despaired. He could have accepted that he was never meant to share his life with another, that his soul was wholly his and would never be split; his heart would never take the shape of someone he could reach out and touch.

Instead, the morning was still pale overhead as Fen’Harel knelt beside the sea, naked in the dawn and filled with hope.

He had removed his armor and it was set in a tidy circle around him. Chainmail, underclothes, cuisse, greaves, fur, plate, medals of command, and a richly-adorned pauldron. The sharp leaves of a weed dug into his leg. He bent and studied his body.

Hands first, because they were easiest. Arms and legs followed. Then the use of a small mirror to examine his skull; he lifted away his hair to check his neck. Then he continued looking down his back. It was as he peered over one shoulder, struggling to view the base of his spine from a different angle, that he heard a voice behind him.

“Ah, Wolf. You know it is not that kind of mark.”

“And yet there will be a sign,” he insisted, quickly masking his surprise. “Some mark on my skin.” He continued his examination with a more considered show of dignity.

“Your soul would sing out to its mate, little Wolf. I would hear it, if none other.” Wisdom smiled and Fen’Harel felt a familiar jolt of irritation at her patient tone.

“What would you know of it?” He asked. He strained to see a lower place, mistaking for a moment a scar from a recent battle for something else. His flash of hope was quickly followed by disappointment.

“I was there when the first of your kind sent their song into the world, Wolf. He pulled her from the sea with his melody. It was agony to witness. She parted the waters on the back of a great serpent. Her eyes were like the ice that roars at the sun and she understood his rage; and so, she could cool it. They were held together from that day.”

Fen’Harel set the mirror down. His inspection was complete, and the result was as it ever was.

He had known what he would find when he’d set out to his task. On the warmest days he always found himself drawn to this place, but he never found the mark for which he searched, the mark that would draw him to his heart-outside-himself. The mark that would guide him to the side of his _vhenan_.

 _Still,_ he always thought, _perhaps the spell was wrought while I slept,_ and he catalogued every freckle and scar to ensure he had missed no sign. _One more day alone,_ he thought, and stood and brushed his knees. Imprints of the grass mottled his skin. 

He looked at Wisdom. The spirit’s form was plain, the only things setting her apart from the People her blunt ears and the glow of green power rooting out of her legs and feet to the earth. She mirrored him, denuded. She looked at him with her usual quiet patience.

Fen’Harel sighed. “She cannot cool his rage any longer,” he said.

“She must return to the sea,” Wisdom agreed.

“No.” He shook his head and bent to retrieve his underclothes. “Not that. She is needed.”

“She seems to think so,” the spirit conceded, and then lapsed into silence, slowly mimicking him as he donned his armor. Chain, breastplate, then the cloak fastened with its silverite clasp. She pulled the garments out of the air, practicing changing her form as he dressed. He motioned for her to stop, and she did, as he wrapped the the fur about his shoulders.

They stood facing one another.

In the distance, the horns sounded.

“To battle,” he said.

“To war,” Wisdom sighed.


	2. Fen’Harel is asked to make the oath of fealty

The feasting that night was wild. The rowdy songs of two hundred bards clamored over one another in the open palace hall that held the revelers of Mythal’s bower. Troupes vied for the attentions of nobles and monarchs with dazzling and vaguely macabre routines of magic, wit, and acrobatics. The bower ceiling was open to the sky, and though the night was clear the air wavered with a premonition of rain.

Fen’Harel recognized the motley of a preferred company and with a flick of his wrist he ordered them come near. Rags of purple, orange, and gold tumbled towards him. The jugglers advanced five apace and the flautists and bell-bearers twinkled their songs over the music of other troupes.

At their head spun a woman of astonishing height in the middle of a great wooden hoop. Veves Longlegs was a bard of hard lines and elegant small features, her dark brown curls like a cloud. The little cavern of a missing tooth peeked into the light when she smiled too wide, which was almost always. As she turned end over end in the great wooden hoop, the muscles of her arms flexed tightly. She spun to a halt and dismounted, bowed, and then led her troupe into formation on the steps leading up to Fen’Harel’s dias. She summoned a contortionist to the fore and the act commenced with trumpeters tossing the contortionist arm to arm. They would play a tune, drop their trumpet, catch the lithe performer, and then toss him on into the next pair of arms. Veves vaulted atop her hoop in their midst, tossing the contortionist to and fro with the trumpeters; she lifted one foot and wobbled, dangerously balanced on the edge, her flashing smile and long legs making her look like the heart of a storm.

Fen’Harel poured from a carafe of blackberry wine. When he refilled the cup of his most steadfast warrior, General Lilta Noon, she only murmured her thanks, never taking her eyes from the performers.

Fen’Harel watched her gaze. General Noon’s face was bare, as she was one of the many Elvhen who sought protection in service to him - a king who would not command the fate of souls with blood geas. She was the senior of his generals. Her joining season was long gone as well and in his retinue she escaped the tradition of her family, who would have bound her into the service of Falon’Din. He knew she still pined as deeply as he did for her mark to one day appear. Where he awoke each day with hope, however, Lilta woke sour and hard, furious at fate, grimly determined to win the mark of her heart through sheer force of will.

Her passion made her a formidable leader and fire on the field of battle.

They had been lucky this day, he thought. None of the command had fallen, though the fighting had been fierce. Looking at this family gathered around him, he struggled to control the fear that not all of them would survive the next fight.

The modest retinue of his most trusted generals lounged back on their elbows. None minded him, too caught up in their revelry and accustomed to their king’s quiet moods. Some watched the bards, but many were taken with the study of the stars.

Mythal’s keep was not the easiest place to study the constellations, but some stars were still visible through the canopy of massive oaks above. One great willow was permitted to brush its arms into the vast open hall. Ghilan’nain’s retinue sat beneath it. Their queen perched on a golden pillow, droplets of red spattering her knees as she fiddled with the flesh of some old thing to make something new. Behind her, the most richly-adorned servants of her retinue trailed out her long black hair and twisted it, interlacing her braids with the willow’s icy green vines. The stars and brilliant bright trails of spirits flying overhead could be glimpsed through the branches. A breeze pushed through the trees.

“All who Keep the Mother’s hand; look you, look you!”

Fen’Harel rose at the call to attention. His retinue each lifted to their knees; beside him, Lilta knelt and ducked her head. Ghilan’nain was aided to her feet by a bowing servant with peaseblossoms laced in his hair.

Mythal entered her bower like the cold nothingness of the deeps.

Fen’Harel and Ghilan’nain bowed.

The Mother came to them. She went first to Ghilan’nain, as the Master of Beasts was true kin to the Evanuris by right of her joining with Andruil.

Fen’Harel fought the surge of familiar jealousy and hurt pride. He trained his gaze on the tiled mosaics of the floor.

Mythal’s skirts rustled on the stairs, evoking the midnight roll of waves to shore. Then she was standing before him. Her outstretched hand was cool beneath his lips; a momentary feeling like ice veining up his cheeks, threatening, before he pulled away.

“Kept,” he vowed.

“Taken,” she completed the brief ritual. With a gesture she bade him stand upright. “Fen’Harel, you hunted valiantly on the field of battle this day. The game was well-played.”

He smiled as he offered his arm to her. Regal, she accepted, and placed no weight on him - hardly touching him as she led him down the steps of his dias.

They meandered through the crowded hall and the dancing and singing of the bards resumed, a beautiful madness entertaining the troops, poets, and retinues of the Honored Ones. Mythal’s retinue followed at a distance that offered their conversation privacy.

“How pleased I am to have entertained you, Mother,” Fen’Harel said.

“I keep you for more than your clever mind, little changeling,” she laughed, brittle. “When your people offered you to me, it was for your lovely face that I accepted you as my charge. Little did I know what a talented creature you would grow to be.”

“My talents are of your making, Mother,” he said, even-toned. 

She grimaced.

Out of the corner of his eye he watched as a black and red serpent emerged from the teardrop front of her gown. The serpent coiled down around their joined arms.

“And yet your lovely face remains bare, young Wolf,” the queen said, as if the thought had only just occurred to her.

He said nothing. From the serpent’s back emerged many sets of tiny, feathered wings.

They reached her throne.

“Have you, then, gained your mark?” As Mythal unwove their arms from the serpent’s grasp the little beast took wing and flew up over the crowd, disappearing into the trees.

Fen’Harel balanced the tips of her fingers on his own as she took her seat. In another age the gesture would have been one of mere show. Now, however, Mythal trembled slightly as she lowered to her golden throne. Mythal’s strength had grown thin and sharp - no less dangerous, yet much diminished.

He had prepared what he might tell her, but before he could speak she raised her hand.

“No longer will I hear honeyed words, Fen’Harel. Your kingdom is meager and falls from your grasp. Anaris becomes a threat to me and mine. The power of my court will protect yours; we will be one People under my banner. Swear fealty to me as you were always meant to do.”

His temper flared.

“My life was not theirs to bargain when they promised it to you, Sea-Mother.”

His voice carried. The bards nearest to the dias stuttered at their songs.

Mythal looked at him, impassive.

The moment stretched, as did the silence through the hall.

Fen’Harel could feel when Ghilan’nain started to draw her power around her retinue.

Then Mythal laughed, and the festive noise broke out again. The tension was dispelled, and she reached out her hand to him.

“Little prince, little King.” She took his hand as he offered it, his mouth set in a thin line as she turned it over and studied his palm. “You have no life,” she murmured.

How many centuries had she kept him, collared, at her side? In how many battles had he sacrificed the soldiers marching with his banners to ensure she saw victory in the bloody sunset? _No life,_ her words echoed in his ears. No _freedom_ is what she meant.

He wished with sudden, violent rage to plunge a dagger through her heart.

His hand and wrist froze, encased in ice in the same instant the thought touched his mind. He tried to bite back his cry as Mythal leaned forward. Her posture blocked their exchange from the majority of the hall - an allowance for his dignity she did not have to extend. He was perversely grateful, and hated himself for it.

“Your season is long passed,” she said. “You have no mate. The Forgotten One, Anaris, controls your lands by proxy and now threatens the kingdom of Ghilan’nain; my strength will secure your borders. I grant you seven days, little Wolf, to find the mark of your heart. When you are, at that time, free to pledge yourself, you will honor the pact your vile kinsmen made at your birth. You will pledge yourself to me.”

“Seven days,” he growled, panicked, on one knee before her. He tried to fight the pain of the cold but not fight against her power. “Such a benevolent gift; it is not enough, Sea-Mother. I need more time.”

She melted the ice and leaned back. He let the arm drop, water dripping from his fingertips, and refused to look at her. His face burned.

She was quiet a moment. When she spoke, he was surprised at what he heard in her tone.

“My _vhenan_ travels the paths. He comes to see his queen.”

He looked up at her. _And I must be strong when he sees me,_ he saw the truth, unspoken, in her pensive gaze. She looked out at her retinue, at the warriors and priests and poets, and the bards of her court and Ghilan’nain and her servants. She was cold, and pale, and all these riches of her court were not enough, he knew, to keep Elgar’nan’s faith in his failing sea-bride.

Fen’Harel stood, stiff-backed. He intentionally did not nurse his hand, though it pricked and pained him. He folded his arms behind his back.

“Will your soul’s heart lend his might in our war against the Stone Warriors?” He asked, unable to check his curiosity. His mind already raced with new tactics he may employ with greater numbers.

“One wonders.” Mythal would clearly say no more. Instead, she said again, her tone raised to send her voice through the hall, “You will pledge yourself, little King. I will not have raised you up for nothing. If you will sire no dynasty, you will bind yourself to me.” Then she chuckled, the sound as dry as the willow’s rustle. “None other commands the blood loyalty of a Forgotten One. When Fen’Harel is at last brought to heel with my vines on his brow, I will be the first.”

Fen’Harel felt a crawling, tightening sensation all along his forehead as she placed the magic on him. At sunset of the seventh day, her mark would manifest as a permanent bond. The feeling disgusted and humiliated him, but he was powerless to turn aside the spell. Once her mark manifested on his skin, he would never find his true mate. The knowledge of her geas lingering, threatening, crawling on his brow, made his gut churn. He felt hot with fury and panic, but he knew that striking out against her, especially here, would be madness.

As the spell was cast, he knew he was dismissed. His throat was tight. He could not speak past his anger and fear, and Mythal smiled coldly to see it on his face. He turned on his heel and strode back to his company. With a gesture they rose as one and, falling into formation behind him, left Mythal’s bower and the sounds of revelry behind.

\--

Fen’Harel and his retinue of warriors bypassed the banks of Eluvians lining the path to Mythal’s bower. The king turned to take number of his guardsmen, and then gave instructions for those generals who could travel through the Eluvians to walk the short paths of the Fade back to his Keep in Mythal’s lands. They were tasked with ensuring the safety of its walls before his arrival.

“Only an honor guard, my liege?” Lilta asked. “Our victory against the Stone Warriors was no small insult. Their wrath may yet reach you on the paths.”

Fen’Harel considered her words, then nodded. “Stay on, then, General. You and a chosen thirty-count.”

Lilta nodded, brisk, and swiftly dispatched orders to the green-clad soldiers under her command.

The eerie cacophony of the feast could still be heard coming from the palace. Wisdom met him at his horse.

“Little Wolf, I know what has happened.”

Fen’Harel rolled his eyes as he tugged the straps of his saddle. “A great feat, for an omniscient spirit. What wonders will you produce for the next King?”

But Wisdom, as she was always able to, ignored his soft sarcasm. “I will never serve another King,” she said.

Gripping pommel and cantle, ready to mount, Fen’Harel sighed.

“So you choose to tell me this. Some riddle. When I swear fealty to Mythal, my lands will be forfeit. They will pass to the Sea-Mother in all but name. Anaris, who should never have underestimated Mythal, will have her machinations fail her at last. I will lead my army for Mythal’s glory, but you, Wisdom, will be bound to another.”

He pulled himself astride his mare. Wisdom did not mount some phantom steed but instead floated at his elbow. Lilta pulled her horse up beside his and reported that the party was prepared. He nodded his thanks and nudged his mount forward, and as they stepped beyond the edge of the wood, the path stretching through the trees shimmered with light under every soft hoofbeat. The way ahead was illuminated as the light of the moons disappeared beyond the canopy of the forest.

After a time, Wisdom said again, “I will never serve another King.”

Fen’Harel jerked his reins to a halt. The sounds of his company quickly pulling up behind him rattled in the night.

He turned and glared at her. “Speak, spirit. Is there more to this prophecy? I’ve no interest in your words spoken like dreams. They’ve no meaning, and half have proven false.”

Wisdom only shrugged. “I counsel what I may,” she said. “The designs you weave based on what I tell you, if they fail, it is through the folly of your pride, for presuming to _know_ where you have not tried to truly understand.”

“Some counsel,” he muttered, and nudged his horse forward again. “Go from me, mudsnipe, if you’ve nothing of worth to tell.”

His thoughts moved quickly, considering the dilemma of the seven-day geas, wondering if there were some way to wriggle out from under the spell. He could still feel it looming on his brow. And if he could escape this magic, where could he go? Where could he run? He owed much to those who gave their lives to his banners - but without his protection they would be passed into the service of other monarchs, never to meet their hearts. Could he leave them with the Honored Ones threatening the freedom of their souls? He knew he could not. He knew he had been trapped... But he had been trapped before, and was particularly good at narrow escapes. There must be some solution, some way...

Wisdom was silent a long, labored moment before speaking again.

“Little Wolf Who Rends the Worlds, what I have to tell is worth your kingdom, is worth your throne, and it is worth your heart.” 

Could he, for once, detect a hint of frustration prickling in her voice? He felt a chill, followed by swift fire, coursing through his soul.

“You speak of my heart? My soulmate? My _vhenan_?” He pulled up again and leaned towards her now, eager, demanding. “Where are they?”

But Wisdom was silent as she floated ahead of him.

After a moment of watching her, Fen’Harel sighed, frustrated, and signaled for his retinue to fall behind. Lilta gave the order to hold back. After only a passing consideration for the darkness of the night and for his relative vulnerability, the king broke his steed into a trot. He followed the floating form of Wisdom down the dimly-lit path through the dark woods.


	3. Fen’Harel makes a mistake born of his pride

Fen’Harel followed Wisdom, alone, on the path. Ribbons of light glimmered in the night sky: the pink, purple, orange, and blue lights of spirits who did not have form, unlike Wisdom, whose binding to Fen’Harel maintained her ability to take shape. When the lights passed overhead faint sounds of bells and whispers followed.

They had left his retinue far behind. Curves in the road separated them from sight. The weight of loneliness settled at his back like a nervous itch between his shoulders.

Wisdom turned and left the walkway.

Fen’Harel reined in.

“Wisdom,” he called, “where do you go?”

“I go to your heart, Wolf,” she said. It was all the motivation he needed. He reached down and patted his mount’s shoulder, then urged her off of the glowing path.

The mare’s eyes rolled as the trees engulfed them. Above the canopy, the spirits of the air still illuminated the ground when they glimmered overhead, but these lights came and went, and the way forward was difficult to see. There was no road through the woods here. Fen’Harel’s mare stepped tall over the underbrush as he followed Wisdom deep into the forest. The sharp scents of ferns, weeds, and bark filled the air, his horse’s hooves disturbing and turning the dark ground.

The feeling of tingling on his back grew. It shifted, shuddering through him, until it pierced his heart. It was not that he was frightened of the dark. Neither did he fear what may stalk, dangerous and unknown, in the woods.

He could feel it now as a sharp pain under his ribs. This hurt was always near, but now he was separated from the command and the camaraderie that distracted him from the longing of his soul. An ever-present pain: he wanted to be able to put his hand out into the darkness and find warmth there, wanted to reach over and touch the fingers of another. He wanted to hold their hand, and see their small, gentle smile when he glanced over, to reassure himself they were still there. _Loneliness._ It tugged at him.

He realized the woods were unnaturally quiet. No sound but his horse’s hooves thudding on the dirt, and the snap and shaking of the bushes as they pushed through the underbrush. No nightsongs of insects or owls, no rustling of nocturnal beasts, no sound but his own heartbeat drumming steadily in his ears.

He pulled up on his reins, realizing that Wisdom no longer walked ahead of him. He was alone.

When he glanced back over his shoulder, his mount lunged, turning in circles, snorting and bucking.

“Whoa!” He lowed, eyes snapping forward, maneuvering the reins. He nudged his thighs and knees as his mare skittered to one side and then another. His gut collided with the pommel as she stopped altogether. He wheezed, the blow shielded mostly by his plate but still, it took a moment to get his wind back. Then he squeezed her sides experimentally. She snorted, shook her mane, and refused to go on.

After a moment’s uncertainty he dismounted, humming low comforting sing-songs under his breath. His mare’s mettle had been tested in battle; she was steadfast and powerful, and had never spooked beneath him before. He glanced sharply side to side to see what might have startled her in this still and quiet night. Nothing appeared to be wrong. Nothing besides his sudden aloneness, and the strange quiet of the wood.

“Wisdom.”

No answer.

 _“Wisdom,”_ he tried again. A strange dust had risen when he’d dismounted, and it hovered around his knees now, vaguely red in the dim lights of spirits above the canopy.

“Some counsel,” he muttered again, looking back the way he’d come. The trees were all the same in the darkness. He’d been turned around when his horse had spooked, but he was certain he could make it back to the path. Mostly certain.

He thought about how he’d come to this place and considered which way to turn. If Wisdom were able, and willing, to come to him, he should not need to call her by voice. When had she disappeared? 

There was the possibility that she had been turned against him. Or that she had never been a true ally, and had always been one of Anaris’ spies in truth, waiting to take advantage of his greatest weakness when she knew his need to find his soulmate was most dire. He could not rule out the possibility. She could always be a spirit of another sort, after all. The form of Wisdom was not an easy guise to hold, but any spirit who could manifest form could exercise their will to appear as a spirit of Wisdom when the true nature was of some other sort.

He had been too trusting.

He hardened his heart and listened for any sign of ambush. He knelt to the ground to make himself a smaller target. If the darkness provided cover for his foes, he could use the night as well.

He moved forward around the front of this steed, keeping low. He brushed one hand steadily on her flank so as not to startle her again. He took another step, and the world flooded with light.

At once his daggers were to hand, shimmering with fire magicks along their lengths, and he growled. His gaze darted side to side. No fire landed at his feet, no flames engulfed him. Then where did this light come from?

As his eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness, Fen’Harel realized that he was, once again, alone. Only this time not even his steed was at his side. The woods all around him were light - the many greens of the trees all cheery and bright as day. He stood at the edge of a clearing, and in the middle of the clearing towered the stone walls of an ancient structure, half-buried in red vines and surrounded by a chest-high field of long, gold grass. Birdsong fluttered faintly in the treetops. A great butterfly wafted overhead, its shadow briefly blocking the sun. It was as if he had stepped into a new day, the sky blue but also filled with the night-lights of Fade spirits stringing across the sky. _How?_ he wondered.

He crouched, cautious. Keeping his daggers in hand he took a testing step forward into the grass. If there were traps hidden here he’d have no protection but his boots. But no traps sprung. There was a warm breeze rattling the field, and all around him the ground seemed to sway and swell with the rolling of the grass as he moved deeper into the field, his curiosity pulling him towards the great tower at the center of the clearing.

Ruins like these, memories of the ancient world, had always been a fascination to him. When he had reached the age where Mythal would let him go from her side he had travelled her lands. He had discovered many such structures, abandoned and forgotten off the roads. So few of the Evanuris and their people ever traveled without use of the Eluvians. Fewer still, when taking the enchanted paths, ever left the safety of the road. Many wonders were scattered in the in-between places where no elf had stepped in ages, and when he was young Fen’Harel had loved to sit in crumbling chambers, pull a pelt over his shoulders, and dream.

War and the intrigues of the Evanuris’ court had kept him well-occupied of late. He felt his heart pounding in anticipation as he approached the old stone structure.

Was it possible that Wisdom had spoken true, when she promised to lead him to his heart?

He reached up and gently pulled the red vines from the stone, peering behind them for a door. When his search yielded only the gritty stone wall he replaced the vines and moved around the tower, repeating his search. He felt thorns on the vines. When he moved a certain way they would dig into his fingers, but for the most part his gloves protected his hands.

As he searched the ancient walls for an entrance, he found his thoughts drawn to where, and who, his heart might be. A light wind blew the golden grass flat. Pollen tumbled past him on the wind. The sun beat hot on his ears, made him sweat in his armor. Would they be powerful, like Mythal? Noble, like himself? He thought of Ghilan’nain’s long black hair, her glowing brown cheeks and beautiful eyes that closed when she laughed, and how her clever hands worked the clay of flesh. He felt a jolt of envy towards Andruil, who had found her love in the first week of her joining season and bonded Ghilan’nain’s blood to the Evanuris with the ineffable, arcane magic of the heart-kiss.

Now, Ghilan’nain fought alongside himself and Mythal while Andruil hunted in the Void, seeking a way to defeat Anaris in combat. Ghilan’nain had made great beasts for her love until her most monstrous efforts were banned from the courts. Now Ghilan’nain fashioned small trinkets of flesh and breathed short, gentle life into them, sending them flying to Andruil across the stars to bring her _vhenan_ reminders of her steadfast love.

But it was also true that not all unions were peaceable. Fen’Harel wondered at a curious symbol set into a stone, uncovered by the vines and blackened like a burn mark.

He studied the rune and touched it. He wondered if his heart, his soulmate would fight with him. Would they argue? Would they be bound together by the strength of their love, and by the resonance of their souls, but would they come to hate each other?

Would they be fated to tear one another apart, eternally?

Mythal could not explain her union with Elgar’nan. They were one and they suffered. Fen’Harel remembered how Mythal had spoken, only once, of her _vhenan_. Elgar’nan had taken leave of her that morning, but all night they had argued, shaking the skies with their fury. And Fen’Harel had been young, hugging his knees on the floor, and it was as if she had forgotten he was in the room - ice receded from the walls and formed teary puddles on the carpet. He watched the water spread. The servant who brushed her hair did not listen as Mythal spoke quietly to herself in the mirror.

 _You would go to him,_ the queen had accused her reflection, her voice hollow. She berated herself: to that day, if Elgar’nan called for her, she would fly to meet him. She would go to his side. She would hold him, and would tremble as he held her in his arms. She would soothe his wrath and make him gentle, and make him love the world, saving it from his strayed and vicious soul. As she always had. As she always would.

Her soul called out to his soul. They were each other’s eternity.

 _It is terrible,_ Mythal had said. _I love him._

 _That is what I crave,_ Fen’Harel had known at once, his eyes wide. _Love._

The rune glowed green. A cloud passed over the sun, and behind him the sound of a hummingbird buzzed near and then darted away. He read the message, “Hidden from mortal eyes, death lies within. Come not to a prideful place.”

 _This place is forbidden,_ he realized.

He looked to see if Wisdom had reappeared.

He scowled back at the rune, and the yearning in his heart pained him. _My heart lies within,_ he thought. He could bear any burden if it meant unlocking the path to his soul. And whatever consequence there might be, he was known for his skill in avoiding such traps. He smiled grimly and touched the mark, certainty in the thrust of his magic as he activated it. A door collapsed inward under his palm, revealing stairs descending down into the structure.

He looked around, again, for Wisdom. He did not see her. There was only himself. He descended into the darkness of the ruin alone, and a great breeze slammed through the door behind him, the entrance cut into the tower open to eyes of the sun.


	4. Fen’Harel walks under the earth for a time

At the bottom of the stairs the air was cool and sweet with a scent almost like lavender. The light of the outside world glimmered far above in the distant doorway. Fen’Harel followed a turn in the tunnel. The dark swallowed him. He reached out to touch the wall to guide his way. It was damp beneath his palm, and cold.

After a time he sensed the ceiling open up above him. The sound of his steps echoed louder, and the air moved faster in a strange cross-wind. The next turn in the wall revealed a light ahead.

It was vague, but he moved towards it until he could make out a shape of the blue glow. As he came close he saw that the light emanated from a tube pushing up through the tiles of the floor. It pulsed slowly. His gaze was pulled to the faint lines of murals, cracked and faded, but still visible, on the walls. On the left Elvhen warriors riding into battle on griffons lifted their swords; on the right, directly across from them, the workers of the Stone Warriors clung to their bloated nugs. This method of painting reminded him of Elvhen works, but the style was distinctly blocky - not truly appealing, by his tastes. Fen’Harel knelt and the studied the light, then looked beyond in the direction it led; further down the hall he saw how the light appeared to punch up from the ground and then sink back under, reemerging again and again from the walls and ceiling deeper into the caves.

 _Strange,_ he thought.

“A little further.”

Fen’Harel spun and swiped out. The blade embedded in Wisdom’s side; he saw it was she as her spirit flesh parted around the glittering silverite. She looked down, impassive, and then pulled the blade from beneath her ribs. She returned it to him, holding the blade so he could grasp the hilt.

“Where have you been?” he asked, accusing.

“You would strike unseeing? What if I were a friend, come to tell you ‘well met,’ little Wolf?”

“Tell me what manner of friend I would find down here, mudsnipe.”

“None, if you strike me down,” she said, and smiled.

He felt a burst of impatience and tried to control it. In the dim, pulsing blue light her form seemed almost to waver.

“I felt more uneasy that perhaps I was aware,” he admitted as he returned his weapons to their sheaths.

“Fear is no shame, little Wolf,” Wisdom said.

He walked alongside the lights and the spirit walked behind him.

“What is this place?” he asked.

“You know what you will find here.”

“Yes. So you have said.” He gestured to the walls and to the blue lights pulsing on the floor and ceiling. “I mean, what was this place used for by the People? In ancient times?”

The passage opened ahead.

“The People did not use this place,” Wisdom said.

He looked at her, annoyed. Then he looked around at the high gray stone walls. Realization slowly dawned.

“Yes, little Wolf,” Wisdom sighed. “Use your head.”

“The Stone Warriors,” Fen’Harel said. His voice was rough with awe, and with lingering anger, thinking of blood on the field of war - and how many of his own had been crushed beneath the great fists of those foes.

“Yes.”

Fen’Harel shook his head. “None of their kind could love in these halls, large as they may be.”

“They did not live here,” Wisdom agreed. She stood behind him. He halted at the opening to a great hall that spread before them.

The one pulsing light that had led them down the hall branched out in many small glowing tributaries. The floor was overrun with illuminated cords as far as he could see into the enormous chamber. Larger single branches led to brightly-shining clusters. There were great towering stones reaching to ceiling. At first he mistook these for pillars, but as he stepped forward he saw that the pillars were shaped, rather, as the buds of a tree.

“These are…” Fen’Harel reached up and placed his hand on the smooth surface of one of the buds. When his finger brushed a thin light a sudden jolt shot through his arm. He jerked back, but the strength of the touch stayed with him. He stumbled backwards, instinctively conjuring a flame into his palm. The flame ate the excess energy jolting through his mana, but all the extra power made the flame surge out of control far stronger than the fire he had meant to bring forth. The smell of his own clothing burning filled the air, and he gritted his teeth and extinguished the flames with a marked effort of will.

He shot an accusatory look at Wisdom.

She ignored him and walked on. “This was a nursery,” she said.

Fen’Harel gazed up again at the enormous structure - like a cocoon, he realized. The blue lights branched and embraced each tower like roots spiralling up towards the ceiling. The cocoons themselves were of the same grey stone as the rest of the nursery. He saw from this angle that many of them had large holes rent in their sides; but others still stood whole.

He backed away. He followed Wisdom’s path, giving the cocoons all a wide berth.

The pulsing of the lights was eerie. As he stepped carefully over the many tendrils rising from the floor, he felt almost as if there was a sort of vibration, answering the pulse, coming up through the floor. It was faint and probably just a fabrication of his nerves - but out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw small rocks tremble with the next coordinated pulse of the lights.

Wisdom led him to an exit on the far side of the chamber. It took an incredible amount of time to traverse; he felt the tickle of thirst at the back of his throat, and thought back to his pack tied to his horse. As they walked the chamber narrowed, and the walls on either side, as they came into view, were also revealed to be covered in murals. On one side, Fen'Harel stopped and studied a likeness disturbingly similar to Ghilan'nain kneeling among reeds, a great army of creatures marching from her cupped palms. He glanced to the other side to see the workers of the Stone Warriors in similar poses, beings of gray rock and blue veins queuing in front of them. He recognized these as the mindless troops the Stone Warriors employed in their forward line, and he stared as they walked past. By the time they reached the exit, Fen’Harel felt as if he had been walking for at least a quarter day. This passage Wisdom stood in front of was surprisingly small. He had to bend to enter it. Luckily, the low ceiling once he cleared the entrance was just tall enough for him to stand - as long as he watched his head for low lights and outcroppings from the ceiling. Wisdom led him down. The further they moved beyond the nursery chamber, the darker the path became, even as it widened out further and further side to side. They were losing both the ambient lighting from the chamber and, as they continued on, there were fewer and fewer blue lights branching over the floor and walls. The path was incredibly wide side-to-side, so that Fen'Harel wondered if this were simply a long, twisting room.

The dark clung to his shoulders and had nearly consumed them both by the time Wisdom stopped on the path ahead.

Fen’Harel looked around, trying to stay alert in the darkness. The dim green glow at Wisdom’s feet offered very little light to see by. He could hear a faint sound of water dripping somewhere behind him - but mainly he felt buried. It was as if the weight of the earth above him hung against a thread, and the thread might snap, and he was losing air…

He realized that this mounting uneasiness was not only due to the oppressive darkness, and the knowledge of heavy earth hunched above his head. He looked slowly around, an uncomfortable feeling of being watching sinking into his skin with each passing heartbeat.

“Here is your heart, Wolf,” Wisdom cut into his thoughts.

He snapped his gaze back to the spirit, his hands twitching at his daggers. “I am led astray,” he said to her, eyes narrowing. He started to back away from Wisdom, but in a heartbeat she was gone. He turned and she manifested behind him; he stumbled back and then centered his footing. What sort of spirit was she, then? His mind raced. How long had she deceived him? Whose was she?

“Ah, here,” Wisdom said, her voice light as she gazed at the wall.

Three sconces on the wall lit with a wild flaring shriek and strange blue fires whispered some sort of eldritch song in the iron bars.

Fen’Harel hesitated.

The lights revealed a mural adorning the stone wall. But the fires themselves were curious, unusual, and he felt himself drawn to them, to something within them that…

“Careful! It is Fade-fire burning in this world, Forgotten One! Step not too close!” Wisdom warned. It was rare for her to raise her voice and he stopped just a breath away from casting his fingertips into one of the flames. But when she spoke of the Fade he immediately heeded her call, jerking away. He stared hungrily at the flames, wanting all the more to study them now that he knew they game from that forbidden place: the land of Dreams, which he had only stepped into with his spirit and mind, never as a man, with a man’s body.

He forced himself to look at the mural. It was a fresco illuminated by the flickering light. It spanned floor to ceiling, its edges disappearing into the dark beyond the fires. It was alike to the works of art he painted on the walls of his private demesne on Mythal’s lands - in the cavern by the sea where, one day, when he tired of the world, he would spend his _uthenera._ This mural was dominated by three monstrous eluvians; creatures poured forth from their rippling surfaces. Elvhen, he realized, the Evanuris and their retinues. Kings and armies, servants, bards, horses, griffons, and monsters…

“Wow,” a voice chirped from the darkness.

In a whirl of limbs Fen’Harel held the hooded figure, their back pressed close to his front, his dagger hovering at her throat.


	5. Of Longlegs, who carried the king

“I have been cautioned not to strike before proper introductions, Veves Longlegs - but we are already acquainted.”

Wisdom sniffed and leaned against the mural. “You assume this bard is not your heart, Wolf king?”

Veves made an outraged noise, but Fen’Harel spoke over her. “Do not answer her, Longlegs. Answer me. For what purpose have you followed me here?” 

“I’m no enemy of yours, my liege,” she tried to assure him, voice tight and controlled as she leaned away from the dagger.

“Speak quickly, youngling, for you have not reached your joining season, and we both know your heart will not be mine when you do.” Fen’Harel’s blade lingered close to the bard’s throat, and she choked back a laugh.

“You’re observant. Who gave me away?”

“One need not be so observant to see what is plain. Your eyes have lingered long on my general. Now, who sent you after me?”

Her cheeks had reddened. “None, my liege! I only -”

“Are you of the Forgotten Ones?”

“No, my liege, I’m -“

He sensed a shift in her tone which heralded a lie and squeezed the flat of his blade tight against her throat in warning. The angle was strange for him, as she was even taller than he, and he was not used to being outmatched in height by any of the Elvhen. Veves noted the threat and stuttered into silence, swallowing hard.

Fen’Harel saw her cast a pleading gaze to Wisdom, who looked almost through her, gazing blandly into the darkness.

“Speak,” he commanded.

Veves took a breath. “I joined the hunt in search of you. I found your horse in the wood. It led me to this sunny plain - accident, or fate, I cannot say. Your steed was gone from my side when I stepped into the clearing, and I saw the temple door standing open. It’s the truth! I came inside. I thought perhaps you had been stolen, as General Lilta fears.”

“Stolen?” He frowned.

“Yes, your retinue and your kingdom are in panic. Anaris claims your disappearance is a declaration of abdication. And though the plot seems obvious, none have been able to discover evidence of her foul play. You have been gone a full five days, my liege. You must return to your people.”

“Five days?” He rocked back, stunned, and dropped his dagger from Longlegs' throat, sheathing it with a firm clack.

Five days. Hadn’t he left his steed not a day behind? Five suns had set in the world above. He felt no hunger or thirst, had not needed to tend to his body’s needs. He clenched his fists and turned, pacing away as he folded his arms behind his back. Did he feel Mythal’s spell strengthen, the magic lying in wait beneath his brow? The geas would fall upon him for all eternity in two more days. Would he feel these days passing, or would the magic creep up so quietly he would not notice? Something distorted the passage of time in this temple. How could he know when the eve of the seventh day drew near?

Veves had taken refuge away from him. He turned and saw her gazing up in awe at the mural.

“I cannot return.” He shook his head. “Not until I have discovered my _vhenan._ And the aim of that quest, I begin to suspect, will not be answered by a whom so much as by a where.” He gestured to the mural, to the pictures of the Eluvians stretching almost floor to ceiling. “Describe what you see, Longlegs.”

“M-me, my liege?” she asked.

He smirked and brushed past her. “You have not come here just to retrieve me for my own good health, bard. You seek a position at my court, to have troubled yourself. Perhaps you wish to advise me?” He nodded towards the fresco. “You are here and I could use you. Advise. Let me see what I make of your thoughts.”

Veves stared at him, then after a moment she shook her head and laughed. “From a moment ago, threatening my life, to now?”

Fen’Harel touched one of the enormous pictures of the Eluvians, shrugging. “My enemies are many, and caution has preserved me.”

Veves stepped back and studied the mural. “The kings and queens of Elvhenan leave the Fade with their many armies, and the Stone Warriors rise up to fight them.” She shrugged. “It is not a unique subject.”

Fen’Harel hummed, musing on the mural. He thought back to all the murals he had passed on his way into this hall. He looked around at the darkness of the wide hall, and turned so that the mural of the Evanuris was at his back. “I see we are deceived. Still, there is a pattern here,” he said.

He looked to Veves with a fierce, scholarly interest, and she blanched.

“Take hold of the Fade-fire, bard,” he instructed, “and come with me.”

Veves hesitated only a moment, then went to the sconce with its heart of blue fire. He watched her. No kin to the Forgotten Ones would dare touch Fade-fire, and his mind felt at ease when she reached up and dislodged the torch. The touch of the Fade was rumored to be poisonous to the blood of the Forgotten Ones, though it was the power of the Evanuris that forbade the Forgotten Ones from using the Eluvians. This was another reason Fen’Harel placed no mark on his retinue: so that his People could continue to use the Eluvians to enter the Fade physically, even when their king could not. While some few trusted advisors among his generals and courtiers were kin to the Forgotten Ones, the bulk of his forces were comprised of postulants who, like Veves, neared their joining season and feared not finding their bondmate. Or those like General Lilta, whose three years were ending and who wanted to be spared entering the service of one of the other Evanuris.

An elf in Fen’Harel’s retinue still had the chance to discover their heart-outside-themselves as long as they survived the battlefields of war and court.

Fen’Harel strode into the darkness of the wide hall, seeking the wall opposite this mural. Veves followed behind him, holding the Fade-fire. Her light revealed exactly what he expected to see: across from the first mural, another was painted. There were no sconces for Fade-fire attached to the wall here.

At first glance this fresco looked nothing like the other. In this mural, Stone Warriors stood facing the hall with their enormous eyes exaggerated much wider than in truth, making their bodies seem small. At their feet their workers scurried, witless. This scene was nothing like the grand parade of the Evanuris marching from the Eluvians to claim the earth that was their right.

“Most intriguing,” he said, feeling pleased. “Thoughts?”

Veves shifted her feet and looked to the mural. She shook her head. “They are not alike, my liege.”

“Bring the fire closer, here,” he said.

Veves repositioned the flame so that it squarely illuminated the four giant eyes of the Stone Warriors, the pupils huge, almost floor-to-ceiling. She looked to him. He beamed at her, unable to hide his satisfaction at having found this part of the puzzle and realizing what it told him. It seemed so clear.

After a moment Veves breathed in sharply. “They mirror one another,” she said.

“In composition, yes. Well done. I am pleased you have the eye for such things.” He nodded, proud. “But speak more precisely.”

She looked to him, bewildered, and he took up the track at once, not truly have expecting her to see what he saw, going to the murals and waving his hands to point out certain features of the art. He explained, “The Eluvians and the eyes; look! These elements are directly opposed to one another. They perform the same function in the work. They perform,” he repeated, grinning at her intently, “the same function.”

She repeated it, blank. “They perform the same function.”

“The Eluvians. The portals to the Fade. All mirrors are portals to the Fade - but the Eluvians are tied to places of safe harbor. The Eluvians are portals to the Fade.”

“Portals which you may not enter,” she agreed.

“Correct, such is forbidden by the Evanuris. The blood of the Forgotten Ones will not allow me to pass through an Eluvian into the Fade.”

Veves looked at him, uncertain. “And you think these murals mean…?”

“If I were to enter the eye of a Stone Warrior, the eyes perform the same function! We’ve never been close enough to a live one to know such things beyond all doubt. But this explains their speed in calling forth their hordes… it explains so much…” He drifted off, staring up at the mural while the light dancing across it seemed to make the subjects move. “I could enter the Fade physically. Without the Evanuris’ knowledge or blessing.”

“But the Eluvians are locked to the places of safe passage, you said so yourself” Veves argued, “The Fade shifts. I could jump in the sea, the greatest mirror of all - but I would doubtless end up stranded in some spirit’s realm. Even if you find the eye and you somehow enter the Fade that way, the ground might give out beneath you where you stood, or stars rain down on you like fierce fire.”

“If the eyes of the Stone Warriors perform the same function as Eluvians, they will certainly be tied to places of safety for their workers. I know it is unusual to think of the Stone Warriors as having any care for their creatures, but these murals seem to tell a story of similarities far beyond anything we have suspected.”

Veves held his gaze, a tic in her cheek revealing her nervousness. “If that’s even what these murals mean. It’s strange how they’re here; and yet the Evanuris have not always warred with the Stone Warriors. Why do you think they always draw the faces so long?” When she gestured back to the first mural the light guttered, then flared back up to life. “And who drew these?”

Fen’Harel looked to Wisdom in the flickering light. He guessed, “My _vhenan_ awaits in the Fade, the land of dreams, and to get there I must enter the eye of a Stone Warrior. Is this true?”

Wisdom did not look away, but grimaced, holding her arms tight when she said, “Well done, little Wolf.”

Fen’Harel’s eyes hardened, glistening with pride. He had understood the puzzle. Another way to enter the Fade, not barred by the magic of the Evanuris. And his heart resided in the Fade, his soul's song, now so close. He felt pleased; in any other scenario, learning his heart’s love lived in the Fade would have crushed him - but the solution had been provided along with the challenge. All he need do was find one of the Stone Warriors and somehow ascend its great craggy surface until he reached its eye. He touched the exaggerated eye of the Stone Warrior painted in front of him.

When he turned he caught Veves looking at him uncomfortably. That she thought him at least half-mad was certain. But she swallowed and steel entered her eyes. “I will do all I can to bring you to your heart, King Fen’Harel,” she vowed.

He smiled, but felt a lingering worry that flared now. “This temple, as you’ve called it, was in truth a nursery, or a sort of birthing chamber for their kind. You said five days have passed?” Veves nodded. “To me it has been as a day, no more. Time flows differently here. One of the Stone Warriors is near. Time bends around them; their weight is like an anchor in the flow of a river, and in war I move our forces accounting for such oddities by feeling with my magic the way the heavens twist around the giants.” He shook his head. “But I’ve no way of feeling the Stone Warrior’s presence so deep under the earth.”

“I can take you to it, I think,” Veves interjected.

He chuckled. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, bard, but how might that be?”

“Well it’s so loud, isn’t it? But I think - when I touched the wall I mean - it was like I got a direction for it, suddenly. Like there was a clear bell ringing. Usually it’s just the song is so loud everywhere I can’t figure where it’s coming from. Then down here it was so loud it was like it set my soul rattling. But if I just,” she reached out and grazed her fingers on the wall, “touch, like this, it all becomes very small, and pointy.” She lifted her hand. “It’s pointing that way.”

Fen’Harel stared at her, looking at her much as she had looked at him a moment ago.

“The song,” he said slowly.

Veves’ hand drifted away from the wall, as if she was coming out of a dream - and then horror slowly spread over her face as she looked at him and realized what she’d said. What she had revealed.

“There is no song, Veves Longlegs,” Fen’Harel said, “that the Elvhen can hear. Only the song the workers hear; the song they babble about, mindlessly, before they are relieved of their pain.”

She turned and fled, the torch of Fade-fire clattering to the ground and rolling away.

He snarled, lunged, and grabbed her arm only by luck. He realized as he moved that only the kick of his heel, slightly off, indicated the direction of his grapple. But she read the sign in the dim and flickering light and used her long legs to her advantage. She stepped far back. She ducked, much quicker than he’d accounted for. She fell all the way into a split, then hooked her forward heel behind his foot. He could not correct in time; he stumbled, rolled, and came up against the wall.

Before he could regain his feet she was atop him, covering the distance quickly. She pinned him, pressing him down with all of her tumbler’s strength, her knees digging into his wrists. “I do not work for your enemies, Old Wolf!” she shouted at him. “I can help you!”

Fen’Harel drove his knee up into her side. She fell off of him and choked in a ball on the ground. She clutched her side, moaning.

He scrambled to his feet and then took two quick steps to stand over her. “Where did you come from?” he demanded.

“I don’t know! It’s the truth! My mother was Elvhen. She said I got my height from her, there was no way it came from my father. But I never knew him, he was gone at my birth.”

“Your mother?”

“When she reached her joining season she gained no mark. But she,” Veves bit her lip. “She gained the song. She said it led her to my father. And I’ve heard it since I was born, just never this loud - not as loud as it is here. I did find your horse in the woods,” she amended, “but really I was following the song. Luck or fate chanced to bring me upon you.” She sat up, wary, still looking around side-to-side and skittish.

“You have not yet entered your joining season,” he observed again, weighing the meaning of this and trying not to feel so disgusted; she was only a child, and none could choose their own parentage.

“No,” she agreed. “And I was afraid that when my mark did not manifest, if I got pledged to another lord they might feel my… my heritage, somehow, during the pledge of the blood writing. I can help you, my liege. Allow me to join your court.”

He stared down at her, an abomination of flesh the likes of which he’d never seen. Or, he reconsidered, perhaps he had. How many elves hid the sly whisper of a song putting them down to bed at night? How many of them heard this call from the depths and ignored it - or, worse, how many among his forces might carry the call of the enemy in their hearts, their loyalty unknown until some summoning from the Stone Warriors revealed their true natures?

“Do you know of others like you?” He stretched out his hand to help her up, trying not to recoil when she touched him.

Her lips twisted into a smile that was more than self-loathing, pulling herself slowly to her feet. “None. If I found another, you’d want me to give their name to you? That it?”

He stepped away from her when she was up. “There are many ways to earn my loyalty, Longlegs. Proving your people pose no threat to me? That is one.”

“I have no people,” she said softly.

“And your mother?”

Veves shook her head. “She has not lived among the People since bearing me.”

He caught the bitter sadness in her tone. Itinerants were rare, and often thought mad. They did not survive long outside of the People’s society. Veves had revealed herself to him. Perhaps it had been on accident, but he had sensed the truth in what she’d said. He felt the foreboding mesh of Mythal’s geas laying in wait under his face, crawling under his skin. He forced his expression to careful, cold neutrality, trying to look at what this could mean for him in this moment, with his _vhenan_ so near. “Your malformity could very well prove useful still,” he said. Veves winced and he elected not to notice. “You’ve some skill in combat as well. A position at my court is yours, Veves Longlegs, if you lead me to the Stone Warrior.”

Veves ducked her head and bent to retrieve the blue Fade-fire from the ground, careful to avoid the flames. She lifted the torch high, and reached a trembling hand out to touch the wall. Her whole body stilled for a moment when her fingers brushed the stone, then she walked on. Fen’Harel followed behind her, trying not to think of the girl's heritage, a spasm of disgust and wounded pride for the People twisting his gut. Wisdom trudged at his side. He glanced over at her, and for a moment he thought he saw, almost like a trick of the light, a deep spasm of something bright and menacing in the spirit’s eyes.


	6. The flight of Fen'Harel, a trickster ruled by pride

After a time the passage opened out into another chamber. In the pale blue light cast by the Fade-fire he saw there were three arches set into the stone. On the right and left the paths appeared to slant upward. The middle path lead further downward. Veves strode to this middle path without hesitation. Fen’Harel and Wisdom followed.

Veves led them through many more such intersections. She would take the left, or right, or center path. Their steps echoed off the ceiling and their shadows stretched long when they passed one of the blue lights punching out of a wall and diving thick into the middle of the path, or hanging from the ceiling, or barring the way ahead straight across the path from one wall to the other. They helped each other over or under these blockages, and when he brushed a light by accident Fen’Harel felt the same maddening rush of magic tingling under his skin. He burned off the excess as they walked, Veves shrinking away from his wilder bursts of flame. She seemed to experience no such flickering in her magic.

He found that he could not bring himself to look at her. He trained his gaze, stoic, on the darkness ahead.

Fen’Harel made note of all the turns so that he could find his way back out… alone, should the need arise.

Wisdom stumbled behind him. He reached out to support her, forgetting how his hand would pass through. As they walked he noticed that her footfalls sounded heavier and heavier, as if the spirit were carrying a great weight with her into the depths of the earth. He wanted to ask her what ailed her, and opened his mouth to ask - but she froze at that moment, saying urgently, “On the path behind. NOW.”

He brought his daggers to hand at once and whirled, and his blade met the eye of a screeching oversized arachnid hanging from branch-thick thread. Veves tumbled past him. The meaty sounds of her hits on the creature’s side mixed with the noise of skittering legs on the stone floor.

Veves had dropped the Fade-fire and it rolled on the ground, a hollow metal ringing.

Scanning the tunnel he saw, in the wildly shifting shadows, two more spiders moving in the dark. One on the path ahead, another coming up behind. He wrenched his dagger across the first spider’s front, tearing open flesh where his blade split the eyes apart. It shuddered, legs spasming, and stilled; his dagger was deep in the flesh and would not budge. He saw Veves disappear into a cloud of smoke and reappear, vaulting on the path ahead. She did not seem to need the light, and her fists glinted with something: metal rings, he realized, all connected on her fists, tipped with thick golden spikes. But it was an elegant dagger she slammed into one of the spider’s legs, before sliding beneath it to punch upward with her claws. 

He whipped back around to track the last spider. But in the shifting light he could not see; the spider had retreated to the shadows up the path. He thought of closing his eyes and fighting on sound alone, but discarded the idea just as quickly. An easier, better solution presented itself: it lolled back and forth on the ground. The impulse to touch it overtook him; Fen’Harel lunged for the Fade-fire, grasping the torch in hand just as the spider struck from behind the body of its fallen mate. He whirled and held the torch aloft. He saw the spider clearly in the light. He brought his other dagger to hand and side-stepped, dropping blows along the spider’s rough hairy hide. He dodged the bristly fang of its chelicera as the creature twisted to grasp him. With a snarl, he ducked under the spider’s body and pressed upward into its flesh. He felt the impact vibrate through his blade as Veves arrived and landed a blow on the spider’s head. It rocked over to one side, screaming. He pulled his dagger free and it was covered in thick green fluid.

He could hardly spare a glance for it as he wiped the ichor onto one leg and sheathed the blade. Entranced by the fire that danced on the torch in his hand, he could not look away; he realized his breathing was shallow - he felt himself almost falling forward, blissful, yearning and free -

“Are you well, my liege?”

Veves’ words brought him back to the tunnel. He shook his head. Once, twice. Blinked at her. She pulled back, guarded. He realized that his grin in the flickering light of the flame might look quite wild.

“I am unharmed,” he explained as he held the fire out to show her, giddily, that he could hold it.

“Are you sure?” she asked cautiously, pulling his other dagger from their first assailant and handing it back to him.

“It is…” he shuddered. “It is powerful. I can feel it, like no magic I have ever touched before. Like a whisper from another world, singing in this one. But I love it. It feels… wonderful.”

“You hear a song?” Veves asked, her nonchalance pointed.

He shifted and grimaced, looking away from the Fade-fire but not back to her. “... Yes. I suppose I do. Faint, but….”

She snorted and turned away, sweat glistening in her hair, stretching as she walked. He followed her with the Fade-fire, Wisdom chuckling softly at his elbow.

“Here,” Veves said, a short time later.

What lay at the end of this tunnel was a curiosity indeed. A small door, only waist-high, set in the stone. It was built of light brown wood. The round silver doorknob appeared to be covered in whorls and ridges. No other way out of the hall lay before them; this door was the only point of egress.

Fen’Harel bent and studied the curious knob. What he had mistaken for a solid piece was in fact a collection of many metal discs. He touched one and it shifted. He bent closer, illuminating the knob entirely in the blue cast of light, and eagerly shifted the discs until he saw, as if unfolding, a pattern of permission, opening, and entrance. He nudged and pressed the elements gently until the pieces all shifted into place. The doorknob fused into one solid piece with a deep, satisfying clack.

Pleased, Fen’Harel stepped back and nodded to Veves. “Open the door and look beyond.”

She stared at him, then placed her hand on the knob and turned. She pushed the door open and it swung in without a sound.

“What do you see?” he asked.

“The music is coming from here,” she whispered.

“Anything else?”

“There’s…. It’s very dark. But… there is a light. A blue light in the center of the room, but it’s faint. It’s a really big room, dark. There’s nothing else in there… No.” Her voice cracked. “There’s something there. Next to the light. It’s moving… I think…”

She quickly reached out to pull the door closed, but Fen’Harel caught the door open with a hand. His splayed fingers held it open. He cast her a stern look, bent, and went though.

The room he stepped into was much as Veves had described. The high ceiling of the cave disappeared above. Many strides ahead, a blue light pulsed over the lip of a wide pit gouged like a well into the floor. There were no doors or ladders besides the one he heard Veves coming through behind him. The ground was dirt and stone, and no designs or tiling revealed itself beneath the fire he held. This was the end of their journey.

At the edge of the pit, a hunched figure swayed, cloaked and small, its legs hanging over the side.

Veves brushed past him, all her trepidation apparently vanishing now that she was in this room, the source of her music. She ran to the side of the figure and fell, heavily, to her knees. Fen’Harel froze, seeing that the bard was easily twice as tall as the sitting figure.

The figure swayed from side to side. It did not turn to greet Veves. She remained on her knees, head bowed, and for a time the cavern was oddly silent.

“What, no dagger for this throat?” Wisdom mocked lightly, coming to stand at Fen’Harel’s elbow.

He threw her a sour look. He had never heard her act like this, and reasoned that she must be agitated by the depth of the stone - or, perhaps, by something in the strange scene before them. The swaying small figure in their cloak had offered him no greeting and had the shape and appearance of one of the Stone Warrior’s witless workers. The mindless creatures that served the Stone Warriors were soulless and insignificant, but then, Veves would be kin to it. He put the disturbing notion from his thoughts. He paid the thing no mind. The pulsing blue light in the pit drew his eye.

Pacing carefully to the edge of the pit, he peered down into the light. The bottom of the pit was visible, but it was just a smooth stone floor.

The source of the light was, again, the many ropes of pale blue. Fen’Harel considered how much of their strange energy he could absorb, if he tried to climb them like the rungs of a ladder into the pit to inspect the floor.

He was testing out with his foot, preparing to descend when Veves shouted, _“No.”_

He pulled himself upright and whirled to stare at her.

Veves was not looking at him. Her eyes were locked on the cloaked figure, pained. “No,” she said again. "We can't go there. The song forbids it. We'll be trapped by it."

And then a voice spoke to them from what sounded like everywhere in the room at once: as if ten thousand voices woven from of the stone grated together. The voice filled the cave up to its unseen ceiling. The echoes slammed back down in a throaty, quaking cacophony. It sounded like tenscore stones cracking apart in a tumble down the mountain’s face. It sounded like a river roaring under the earth and taking the bodies of dead creatures out to sea. And it sounded, too, like the blackest silence in the depths of the earth - it made no sound at all, and would never be disturbed by living breath.

_“Release me,”_ said this voice.

Fen’Harel only uncovered his ears when he could once again hear his own shaking breath. He had dropped the torch in agony. It rolled on the distant floor of the pit, and so his only light in the cavern was the blue glow. Disoriented and in pain, he looked around for Veves.

She was on her side beside the figure, curled into a ball. He went to her, his legs shaking, and dragged her up by her wrists. “Do you know what was meant by that voice?” he demanded.

Veves shook her head, distraught, her bard’s motley stained with dirt and spider ichor and her eyes watering, and when he realized how hard he grasped her wrists he softened at once, chagrined.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and let her go. She looked like she might collapse, clearly even more deeply affected by the voice than he was, so reached out and steadied her, hands solid on her shoulders. It was too easy to see her as an enemy, blinded by his own fear.

The voice rang up around them again. It was cut through with despair. It took a long time before either of them realized that the voice was laughing, wheezing and sad, as it begged again:

_“Release me from the song. I have brought you here, and it is done. At last. The poison must not spread.”_

It was unbearable. Fen’Harel snarled, feeling sticky warmth under his right ear. He staggered back from Veves, who fell to the ground. He collapsed, unable to catch himself or control his fall, his head slamming hard into the ground. His hips arched up, his whole body vibrating; his shoulders and heels dug painfully into the dirt and he thought he might be shouting, so he gritted his teeth to hold in his screams.

When he realized the room was quiet, he could not say how much time had passed.

He heard stifled, choked sobs and knew they were Veves’. His own cheeks were wet, his throat full. He pushed himself up, stiff and sore, and saw that Veves had dragged herself over and was curled up on her side with her head laying in the mindless worker’s lap.

What could be done? He felt a furious pulse of frustration and helplessness. They were close, he could sense it. On the precipice of everything he had waited and longed for, and yet there was no way forward. An empty room and a pit with a smooth stone floor. He looked wildly over at Wisdom, who seemed perfectly unaffected by the voice. She lounged against the cavern wall, legs and arms crossed, and bared her teeth at him in a mocking grin.

“I cannot help you further,” she said, scornfully, her eyes glinting with violet light.

He scowled at her, trying to shake the disorientation out of his pounding head.

He looked around the room. There was nothing here. No answers. No door to the Fade. Only the voice, directionless and mighty, and he wracked his brain for what the next step might be. There had to be one - there had to be a way forward. But the room was empty. There was no puzzle to solve.

Only… he slowly corrected himself. The room was not empty.

He looked at the small swaying figure and came closer to look at its features in its cloak. The hooded thing’s eyes were downcast, but it was not looking at Veves sniffling in its lap. Its stout shoulders hunched forward.

The workers of the Stone Warriors had no souls. He had never heard one speak, but he doubted their voices sounded like that.

He stared at Veves, crying in the thing’s lap. Then he looked at the worker’s bland, blank face.

He realized how he had erred: it crept into the base of his skull, furious and hot with embarrassment and denial. In a wash of selfish discomfort, he knew what he must do. Whether it opened some new door or not, he must make amends.

This thing, this clay slave of the Stone Warriors - he knelt, then bowed to it, bending until his forehead pressed the dirt, the magical webbing of Mythal’s geas tingling under his skin.

He humbled himself and spoke the words of highest honoring.

“I, Fen’Harel who Keeps the Mother’s hand, I look to you Honored One, and I see you. I beg your forgiveness for not honoring your sooner. I beg forgiveness for my… for how I have treated your kin, who guided me to you. I seek the eye of the Stone Warrior.”

The room was silent.

And then the figure’s cowled head moved, and looked at him. When Fen’Harel dared to look up, he saw the plain round face of the figure staring back, wrinkled and covered in faded black tattoos, almost like a soul’s mark. Her light skin was covered in red freckles.

“We honor the greeting of Fen’Harel,” she said. Her voice was soft, croaky but soothing. “We are the Player of the Vast Song.”

The Player lifted Veves gently from her lap and dried the bard’s eyes with her sleeve.

“We will show you the way to enter the eye,” she continued. “In return, you must make us a promise.”

Fen’Harel swallowed his shock on hearing her speak, schooling himself to stillness. He kept his face pressed to the cool earth; it was a kindness for his burning face.

It wasn’t only the growing strength of Mythal’s magic that heated his brow.

“Ask, and I will answer,” he vowed.

She nodded, and Veves sat back and took slow, calming breaths as the Player explained her price.

“Before you seek what you desire in the eye of the Titan, you must place your dagger here, through our heart.”

Veves choked. “No,” she insisted. “Please, please do not stop the song.” She pulled up, tight and shuddering, her eyes closed. “It is beautiful.”

“Too beautiful,” the Player agreed. “It was hubris that set the chords together, and fear that has kept them singing. The weft of the music is warped. All are in danger, now that the door has been unsealed.”

“No,” Veves pleaded, shaking her head.

The Player pulled back her hood. She was bald beneath, and her ashen tattoos cut sharp angles all down her skull. She looked at Veves, pained.

“You do not know what you ask. This must be done. The door cannot be shut, and so the only chance the realms have is for the song to end here. Look.”

The Player stood and held out her hand over the pit. Fen’Harel pushed himself up from his knees, standing closer to see with interest what was being done. Veves looked, too, but Wisdom held back - keeping close to the wall.

He thought he heard her whisper from across the room, _“You have the right to find your love, little Wolf.”_

The ground shook. The Player moved her hand. The stone floor of the pit cracked, broke, and then shifted. It split - no, it opened. The torch trembled, then tumbled and fell - through the crack and out of sight. The floor of the pit opened wide to reveal the eye of the Stone Warrior: huge, a pupil of slowly-turning boulders floating in a ring, buoyed on a sea of deep, glowing red.

Veves’ eyes fluttered closed and she moaned.

The Player’s voice cracked when she said, “We are poisoned. We are polluted. We endure.” She looked to Fen’Harel, pleading.

“End our song, and I will show you the way.”

But Fen’Harel already knew the way. 

He felt Mythal’s geas snapping like fangs close to his fate; the magic shivered with power underneath his skin, threatening to boil over. He could not wait. He’d made no vow. He leapt from the edge into the pit, Veves’ cry of “NO” at his back. He hurtled down, down, into the glowing bright red all around him. His whole body went numb as he hit it, and he fell through the center of the Titan’s eye.


	7. The roamer of the beyond and his heart, at last

_Where did his spirit go, when he broke through the eye and fell down, down, down, down, down, down, and down, until the water surrounding him ceased to be water and he felt that it was air, warm and humid? How long until the red bled from his vision and was replaced by black? He fell up, up, up. How long until no sensation touched him, no sound came to his ears or breath into his lungs, so that his body, heavy, felt as if it slept?_

_He learned of the Song as he fell. He learned what it could do. He saw the realms pulled, pulled, and pulled, until they tore apart._

_Where did he go?_

_How long did he fall?_

_What did he dream?_

\--

He woke with a sharp cough and wrenched onto his side, gagging and expelling nothing. He gulped for air. Dirt and pollen sucked up into his open mouth, bits of grass tickling his nose. But not green grass; white grass, bright like snow? He wheezed as he felt magic thrumming through his body. His bones and flesh knit back together; he shifted his neck and felt something prick back under his skin and become whole once more, the wound closing under the familiar cold touch of a healing sprite.

Panting, he cast his eyes upwards.

The sky was green.

His heart wrenched with triumph and fear.

The Fade. At last.

He had never thought to walk here physically; but his love, his love was here.

Anxiety worried at the back of his mind: he had been able to touch the Fade-fire, yes. But would he be destroyed for this trespass into this realm? Burned to ash, forbidden forever from manifesting again?

The little sprite fluttered into his vision and touched the scar on his forehead. Fully healed, he smiled through his fears and sat carefully upright, raising a finger on which the sprite delicately took a seat.

“Not that, little friend. Thank you for your aid. Tell me, do you know where I might find my heart?”

The sprite threw back its head and laughed at him, slapping its knee, then pounced, bit his finger hard, and disappeared in a puff of smoke. He hissed and examined the wound: a small cut, but deep. Blood welled from the cut and spilled over his finger. As he brought the wound to his lips and suckled it, a deep red droplet streamed down the lines of his palm and struck the ground.

The dry, brown-bone trees around him shuddered.

Pain slammed him to his knees.

He nursed his left arm, disoriented and afraid. A sharp, vicious pain like none he had ever felt ripped through the sinew of his forearm. He cried out. The bare branches of the trees around him exploded at the sound; each flourished with shining golden leaves, their branches creaking and groaning under their new and ponderous weight. Fen’Harel cried out again at a fresh slice of pain in his palm. Holding his hand before him, he watched what writ itself there in wonder.

The mark cut through his flesh. It appeared first as a golden vein, throbbing with light in his wrist. The vein spread into his palm. The magic poured from his hand in a golden mist. It cut his hand in two angles: in the thick flesh below his thumb and under his fingers. Jagged teeth followed the long path, each tipped with a drop of red light, almost like blood.

Swallowing his trembling and pain, Fen’Harel stared at the mark of his soul’s love. Already the gold and red were fading; becoming dark gray, like an old toothy jaw settled like a fossil in his hand.

He heard a voice in the trees.

He heard _her_ voice.

“What is…?” he heard her saying, knowing with a deep vibration throughout his chest that he heard the voice of his beloved. He could tell she was incredibly distant. She said something else, perhaps, “You’ve got to be -” before her voice faded once more.

_She is here,_ he thought, his heart racing. _She has lived here in the Fade my whole life. A Librarian, perhaps? A member of the courts who chooses never to reside in the physical realm? She must love the Fade deeply, she must not be of the Forgotten Ones, she must…_

_Or… has she been kept here? Could one of my enemies somehow have known she was my vhenan, and kept her trapped here, apart from me? Anaris? Elgar’nan?_

_Mythal?_

Then he heard her scream.

The reaction that jolted through his body was an utterly mindless, enraged, overpowering need. He needed to be near her. He needed to be at her side. He needed to find her, to find her, to find her, find _her, find her, find, find, find._

The command, the compulsion, drove him into a directionless, reckless run. She was so far away. He felt like all his bones were rattling apart, like his lungs were filled with only echoes of her screaming. He wanted to yell for her and call out to her, but his throat was stopped by sticky, panicked fear. He ran through the golden forest, running one direction, then sprinting madly in another. He no longer heard her at all. It was futile, and part of him knew that, but the greater part of him was utterly consumed by fervid, desperate want. He only came to his senses when he tripped and, exhausted, couldn’t rise from his knees, his heart pounding and his breath ragged.

He wanted to find her. He wanted to run to her. He wanted… he wanted to hold her near. He wanted to push her hair (what did her hair look like?) from her face. He wanted so much to bury his face in her shoulder. He wanted to rock with her, his arms around her tight.

He needed to hold her and never let her go.

The power of his yearning - enhanced by the ancient magic of the soul’s mark pulsing in his hand - grew too great.

He slouched and leaned up against a tree. In his blinded madness, he had discovered the edge of this strange wood. The white grass shifted beneath his legs. It moved on its own, spinning its strands into long, lazy braids. A golden leaf fluttered to the ground, followed by another. He heard sprites giggling above him. 

Like warmth spreading through his whole body, he felt drunk and exuberant.

Too warm; he shed his armor. He found, after fumbling with the clasps of his bracers and wishing them gone, that he could undress with only a thought. He did so, then spent some time learning how to craft clothing from the magical essence of the Fade and having it keep physical (and solid) form on his body. When he was comfortable, he leaned back against the tree and let his mind slow, taking in the sight of the realm around him.

He had forgotten to fear this place. The magic felt almost sympathetic to him; tricky and ever-changing, it was much as his magic in the physical realm. He found that weaving it around himself was not only possible, but easy. Pleasant, even.

He breathed slowly, watching his own belly pulse in time with his still-thundering heartbeat. His gaze was drawn, inexorably, to his hand.

He need not fear Mythal’s geas now, he knew. Her magic had been purged from his body by the fire of his soul’s mark.

How would he find his love?

He had heard stories about how time passed differently in the Fade. He had heard the many stories of the Fade’s shifting paths - always changing, formed by fickle spirits. Calling on these spirits and allying with them, that was how he would search for his heart.

His heart.

He had _his heart._

He saw the tears in his palm, in his lap. Quiet and relieved, he cried for how quickly everything had changed. He cried because of how good and impossible it felt, after so many hundreds of years wondering and hoping, doubting and wishing every night - how it felt to have his mark. The sensation of fulfillment and pressing desire was overwhelming. He was connected to a woman who wanted him. _She_ might yearn to be near him too, and this thought made him groan, sending an electric jolt of wanting through his whole body. He wanted so much to be with her. The rustling in the golden tree whispered like his soft sobbing breaths. He cradled his stomach, fingers tentatively brushing the long-awaited signal in his palm.

He had never known joy like this. He had never felt anything with such a certain, comforting strength.

_I love._

_I am loved._

_Someone loves me._

Sublime, the knowledge buzzed through him, elated and pure, and his throat felt thicker, and his heart ached and he cried away every moment of doubt and self-hatred that had plagued him in his darkest moments. Beating, drumming, the truth struck through him, a powerful ache:

_Someone loves me. Loves me! Someone loves me, and I love. I love._

Little sprites jumped from tree to tree above. They whispered a sibilant song of his thoughts back to him from the branches: _“Love. Love! Wanted! Loved!”_

They shrieked and fell to bickering with one another, like many tiny ringing bells.

He felt strong when his tears dried. Free, and happy, smiling openly up at the sky. The mark on his hand pulsed with comforting heat.

_I will find her._

He pushed to his feet and looked out at the Fade. Here, he felt released and whole. This realm was no danger to him. On the contrary: it was the home of his beloved. He would look for her. His heart’s song would pull him to her. He may feel directionless now, but he would travel, endlessly, to find her.

He would hold her in his arms.

He would brush his thumb across her lips.

He shivered.

_I will find her._

Fen’Harel saw a path leading down the hill through the white, waving grass, and he walked to it. He shed his title, his throne, and his people; no longer a king but a lover, Fen’Harel became a wanderer of the wild paths, seeking his soul in the Fade.


	8. The most desperate hour for the Wolf, his scheme, and setting the realms to rights

Silks in reds, golds, and blues. Armaments glowing and vibrating with the hum of their magical power. The hoofbeats of great stags and their mournful lowing. Attendants hauled baskets and backpacks from hand to hand, the thump of supplies hitting the ground mingling with the ringing of stakes hammered into the path. The tents billowed when raised, their canopies gilded and strung with glimmering lights, fighting back the gloom of the Fade.

Fen’Harel sat on a hill overlooking Andruil’s camp and mused what a wonder it was that every spirit of Gluttony wasn’t drawn to this overwrought display.

He adjusted his walking staff from right to left shoulder and conjured another slice from the idea of an apple he held in his hand, chewing thoughtfully.

He had learned many things in his time here. Traveling had become a joy to him. A spirit of Petulance leaned on his knee now, its face twisted pitiably as it reached for the idea of an apple he held. It lurched up, trying to grasp the idea, and Fen’Harel grinned as he pulled his hand up out of its reach. The spirit stamped its foot and, sated for the moment, vanished in a pop of smoke.

He had learned how to approach all spirits cautiously, keeping his emotions calm. He had slowly mastered patience and care, at first because the spirits were useful guides through the Fade but, as time went on, because he came to understand the danger he posed to their natures. They were malleable. They could be turned from their purpose. He had been forced to kill them in his early adventures. Foolish mistakes, all of his own doing. The pain of that waste had evolved, over time, to genuine care for the creatures’ lives.

He often found himself thinking now of Wisdom, trapped in the Titan’s temple, with a nervous twist of regret.

Regret crept to sit beside him now, leaning his head on his shoulder. He turned and kissed his brow, sympathetic.

Endeavor stood, straight-backed and transparent, at the edge of the hill, her hands folded behind her back. “You believe she may be one of Andruil’s retinue? But how is that possible? You say the blood magic binding would bar her from your song.”

Fen’Harel shifted and handed Regret a slice of the idea of apple. The spirit sighed, and glumly crunched into the pale fruit.

“It is possible,” Fen’Harel said, “that my heart serves as a guide for Evanuris who pass through the Fade. I had heard of such guides all trained by Ghilan’nain, but never met their kind. I’d assumed that they’d bear Ghilan’nain’s blood writing but...” he thought back to his arguments with Ghilan’nain, his insistence on the cruelty of the blood writing. Had she been swayed? Was it possible that her guides travelled unmarked through the Fade? He frowned. “Perhaps not.”

Endeavor looked back at him, shrugged, and turned back to the camp.

“No time to waste, then, is there?” she asked.

“No,” he agreed, gently pushing Regret away and getting to his feet, leaning on his walking stick. “Thank you for your help in finding this camp.”

Endeavor nodded briskly and, fulfilled, vanished.

Fen’Harel called on the wisps nearby and asked them to push his steps. In this way he could take great strides across the land, as if he weighed nothing. Although all weight was irrelevant in the Fade, one spirit’s demesne might cause the pull of the earth to be great, where another preferred all things in its demesne to float. The wisps helped him navigate the treacherous, changing sands.

In contrast, the paths that the Evanuris travelled were home to no one single spirit. Rather, many spirits maintained a network of roads safe for the large retinues of the Evanuris to travel. Some had been plied with favors and others forced into service. As he came nearer to the camp, Fen’Harel slowed his steps and waved away the wisps. They screeched their tinkling laughter and tugged on his ears as they flew away. He reached for his hood and pulled it over his head. When the first servant spotted him, he hunched forward and smiled blandly, offering to take their basket. With just a suggestion of his magic, the servant blinked and nodded, handing him the goods.

Fen’Harel walked in his humble guise all through the camp. It felt wrong to him, now, to walk in a place where the ground was solid. In the Fade, he was used to the earth suddenly shifting underfoot. A huge blossom might sprout forth and lunge towards the sky, or a belch of lava threaten to singe his cloak as he sprinted out of reach. Rain did not soak him; it would melt with a sweet taste on his tongue, sighing across his skin.

He did not love this world for its newness, or for these forbidden wonders. Neither did he love it for being strange and beyond his understanding.

He loved this realm because she resided here, somewhere. It was true that he had not heard her voice again since that day, and he had not felt the tug of her song, although his mark pulsed with warm, comforting weight in his hand. But this could not dissuade him: he had heard her once. He knew she yet lived, feeling her heartbeat in his palm. His heart welled with hope and certainty as he searched and searched.

He would find her.

Unnoticed in his unremarkable, ascetic garb, Fen’Harel’s disguise was complete with the basket. It rendered him effectively invisible, but still he found it prudent to swing wide of Andruil’s own tent. He found that the soldiers, as expected, spoke freely. 

It was while trying to see if she sat around one of the fires, perhaps wearing one of the military cloaks of Andruil’s high command, that he first heard the whispers.

They meant nothing to him, at first. He continued to search.

“The weapon,” one man said to another, shaking his head.

“Our great powerful weapon,” he overheard.

A chill feeling lumped in his throat.

 _The red weapon,_ was the phrase on everyone’s tongue.

_It is almost finished._

_It has been made better._

_Who unlocked the temple?_

_Elgar’nan does not know._

_But he retrieved the weapon._

_We go to war._

_We found it first._

_It is ours._

_We will end the Forgotten Ones, at last._

_Mythal will not stand in our way._

Fen’Harel tried to fight the panic that gripped him. He swallowed, closed his eyes tightly, and traveled with Andruil’s people, listening and learning, his heart clouded by fear.

\--

His vhenan was not one of the guides leading Andruil’s people through the Fade, but he could hardly turn his focus to that now. He yearned to seek her in the far corners of this realm. But instead, he stood before a grand Eluvian and shuffled forward with his head bowed as the queue ahead of him stepped out of the Fade into the physical realm.

 _This is wrong,_ his heart insisted.

The spirit of Honor, tucked discreetly under his hood, whispered, “You know you must.”

Fen’Harel took a deep, calming breath, closed his eyes, and, as he watched the back of the servant in front of him shimmer and vanish through the Eluvian, he vowed to her under his breath, wherever she may be, “I will come back for you.” 

He knew the Eluvian would detect him, with his blood of the Forgotten Ones. But in his wanderings in the Fade, he had studied the spellwork on the Eluvians, and had learned how to counter it just enough so that he might leave the Fade one day with his love. She was not here with him now, but as it became his turn he reached out to the net of spellwork that would have served to bar him entry. With a vicious twist of his magic the traps in the Eluvian gave way. He stepped through with the rest of Andruil’s retinue, undetected.

In his studies, he had also learned that these traps barring the Forgotten Ones could only be deactivated from this side of the mirrors.

So he tried not to think about how he would gain entry back into this realm of dreams, where his love resided. He could not use the Eluvians from the other side. Where would he be able to find another Titan’s eye? For he knew that the Titan at the temple could no longer send him here. He had heard what had been done there. He shuddered. Fear sat heavy in the back of his mind.

He worked very hard, as he stepped into the waking world, not to think about never finding his love. He tried not to think of her waiting for him in the green mist of the Fade, laying back in the white grass of some spirit’s realm. Or seeking him out in some Nightmare’s cave, Determination her shield.

With a whisper from Honor, and a great effort of will, he put her from his mind entirely.

He felt cold. With grim finality, his feet found the floor on the other side of the Eluvian. He came into the dim light of a great hall alone, and it was strange to see a solid ceiling overhead, and not the skies above as a twisting, green cloud.

Ghilan’nain saw him at once, and her eyes grew wide.

“Andruil my love, you have been stalked by the Wolf Who Wanders, and returned the Lost King to us at last,” she said, her voice carrying over the length of the grand hall that sat at the heart of Andruil’s kingdom.

With a wave of her hand, she summoned a wind that threw back his cowl.

He stood at the heart of Andruil’s castle, face bared to the retinues of both Andruil and Ghilan’nain. The servants of Andruil who had followed him through the Eluvian saw him and scampered away. Those who had frozen in place were pulled away by their brethren.

He leaned on his staff and observed the scene before him, silent and thoughtful.

Andruil and Ghilan’nain sat atop their golden thrones, hands drifted together across a table where two cups of wine stood in ornate glasses. Andruil had perhaps just taken her seat, and leaned forward now, staring at Fen’Harel, intent. He couldn’t tell if her expression was one of curiosity or anger.

Ghilan’nain’s smile was kind, if sad.

Fen’Harel walked forward, pulling his finery from the essence of the Fade. The gold and heavy fur linked about his shoulders, armor shifting to replace his nomad’s clothing. His staff tapped with a hollow thwok upon the stones as he advanced. There were murmurs in the hall; this manner of magic was unknown. It twisted the energies of the Fade in a way that he knew would feel strange to those assembled. But to him, this type of magic was now as comfortable and familiar as breathing.

When he was at the foot of their thrones, he rested his forehead on his staff, looking up.

“What has become of the Mother, Ghilan’nain?” he asked.

Andruil looked away.

“Much has changed since you left, Wolf King.” Ghilan’nain shook her head. “For one hundred years she tried to overpower the whims of the other Evanuris.”

Fen’Harel stilled. His mind raced. He clutched his staff and swallowed, then spoke.

“One hundred years…?”

Ghilan’nain looked at him strangely, then with pity.

“How long did you think you walked the Beyond, little prince of the Forgotten Ones? Did the Honored Ones not warn you that the ways were dangerous? That they would steal your very life away from you? You have been lost to your people for three hundred years,” she said, gently.

“Anaris has all but mastered your lands,” Andruil spat, cutting in. “Your disappearance has been touted by her cronies as abdication. Some sort of plot seemed obvious, but no evidence of foul play could be uncovered. Foolish, stupid brat.” She hissed, her hand clinging to her wife’s all the tighter, betraying her fear. “Our kingdom suffers gravely for the hunger of Anaris at our borders. She is bold, sitting in your seat and commanding forces - ”

“Yet she was held in check when Mythal could still claim Fen’Harel’s birthright,” Ghilan’nain interrupted, sharp and loud. Andruil fell silent. Ghilan’nain squeezed her hand, and they shared a gaze that spoke of powerful understanding and deep, forgiving love.

Fen’Harel rocked and felt the solid floor beneath his feet.

“What of Mythal?” he asked again.

Ghilan’nain looked back to him and grimaced. “She fell. The Mother is no more.”

He could not describe the feeling that took him then. He had suspected this, given the whisperings in the camp. But it did not feel possible. Surely at least Elgar’nan would not…? But he had to admit to the truth of what was in front of him, though it stung and twisted, sick, within him. This was the truth, then. The Evanuris could not be reasoned with. He looked to Andruil, mastering his face so that nothing of his thoughts would be known.

“And you, who hunts three paths?”

Andruil waved her hand, her face sour.

“I allied against her in the end, yes, and for it gained the power to end Anaris and all the Forgotten Ones. I must protect my people.” Her gauntleted hand smacked the arm of her throne.

Fen’Harel felt a seething rise of anger; had he loved Mythal, who had hurt and caged him? Yet, she had raised him. He would see her avenged.

“I claim blood’s price,” he said evenly, his voice calm.

Andruil stiffened, then nodded. “As is your right. What would you claim?”

He spoke to Ghilan’nain. “Give me one of your creatures. A steed. One that strides from horizon to horizon; I must be quick about my way.”

Ghilan’nain’s fingers brushed over Andruil’s knuckles. She smiled.

“My creatures are forbidden, brother-in-arms. I only fashion trifles for court amusements. Not,” she said expansively, sighing, “ _any_ steeds the like of which you seek.”

Fen’Harel gave her a flat look, and Andruil laughed.

“He’s right, my love, but - Fen’Harel, to bring the threat of death down upon my wife, I would not even pay the blood price.”

He nodded. “As I expected. But it comes with a promise. I will rid you of Anaris, should you grant me this price.”

Andruil’s eyes gleamed, and she looked to Ghilan’nain, hungry. Ghilan’nain gave way with a laugh, kissing the back of her wife’s hand.

“Surely we can fight off the rest of the Honored Ones, if we no longer fear Anaris at our gates. I will make your steed, Fen’Harel,” she agreed.

The steed Ghilan’nain gave to Fen’Harel was “appropriate,” as she described it, laughing.

He paced over the earth in horrible, great strides. He tore the forests out by root and made the mountains shudder. The black wolf, colossal, bore him true, north and south and east, to all the lands of the Forgotten Ones, its many red eyes glittering in the night.

He meant to warn the Forgotten Ones of the Evanuris’ weapon. But what he found amongst his kin was just as horrible.

The Forgotten Ones had stolen the knowledge of the red weapon, and planned to use it to strike down the Evanuris. He wheedled and bargained at each court, and at each court he was turned out: a madman, a fool, and a weakling.

He thought of the villages and towns, the cities of all elves all trampled and smoking. To destroy one another, the monarchs would choose to sacrifice their kingdoms. Fen’Harel thought of Mythal, who had campaigned against the red weapon, certain it could not be controlled. Fen’Harel remembered the song at the center of the Titan’s eye and knew she had been right.

He could not let the Elvhen pay the price of their rulers’ pride.

He found his people sheltered in the dark halls of Mythal’s bower. General Lilta led them - a rebel band, a force of the unmarked still holding out against enemies from every court. They believed their king dead. They were willing to die rather than give up their freedom.

His reunion with her was cold.

“You have been gone a long time,” Lilta accused, tight and mean, her eyes tired.

“I was wrong,” he agreed, leaning on his staff, looking down at his hand. Her eyes followed his, flashing with painful envy before she squeezed her eyes shut and looked away. Fen’Harel gazed at her, thinking.

“Would you march beside me, one last time?” he requested, polite and gentle, at her mercy completely.

It was too much; they both knew. But she was steadfast and true. The General agreed to once more be his second, and she sent messengers to every realm with his messages:

 _The Lost Wolf has discovered another secret of the Evanuris’ weapon._ To the Forgotten Ones.

 _Mythal’s ward has seen the Forgotten Ones gathering their forces, and will use the red weapon against them._ To the Evanuris.

_Retreat to the realms Beyond, and Fen’Harel will raze the earth with the great weapon. Our enemies will see our power._

The Evanuris, thinking him one of theirs, retreated to the Fade through the Eluvians.

The Forgotten Ones, using their evil paths and knowing the prince to be their kin, clustered in the Void.

Neither knew that Fen’Harel had sent this message to the other side.

Fen’Harel drew Lilta up behind him on his great slavering beast, the eldritch wolf whose howls shook the stars. And when the time had come and the monarchs were arranged, he returned to the temple where the spirit, bard, and Player still sang the old red song, trapped.


	9. The rift that ended the red song, and Fen'Harel separated from his heart

Ghilan’nain’s great creature bore Fen’Harel and General Lilta Noon to the old red temple past the veil of morning. It shuddered when the King and warrior dismounted, then collapsed, its legs splaying in the great shifting field. Its flesh mixed into the earth. This is why we plant our spring _mehdoal_ in the high field; the land is blessed by Ghilan’nain’s last great working of flesh.

Fen’Harel and General Lilta Noon went through the door that Fen’Harel had opened so very long ago. They found the temple ransacked, a site of pillaging now long-abandoned. Torches had been installed on every wall; the blue ropes has been sliced, great chunks gouged out and removed by cart and pulley. Birds and bats now nested in the cavernous halls, and as Fen’Harel and Lilta passed beneath them, they fluttered and squeaked and rattled the chains that hung from the ceiling.

Fen’Harel shuddered as they labored to pass through the nursery. The great cocoons had all been smashed. Their shattered pieces littered the floor. The rubble made it difficult, at times, to carry on. Whatever had grown within them had been removed.

They passed through the low hall with the murals and guilt tugged at his heart. He spared only a brief glance for the depiction of the Evanuris leading the horde - so like Mythal, he thought now - before swiftly moving on.

He had done well to memorize the turns of the labyrinth. Leading his General into the depths, Fen’Harel descended once more into the abyss.

\--

The little door at the end of the tunnel was still open, just enough to let a glow of red light seep to where Fen’Harel and Lilta stood. Towards the end of the labyrinth he had not needed to lead; they had followed the growing, eerie hum that vibrated in the walls, loud enough for both of them to hear.

“Thank you for following me, old friend,” he said to her, keeping his voice low.

She had been glancing behind them to check that they were not followed, ever vigilant. She nodded to him, grimly. “I do not know what you need me for, my liege, but I am here.”

He smiled sadly, and said to himself as he walked forward to the little door, “It is not I who needs you.”

Beyond the little door, the great cavernous chamber was awash with fell, red light. The three he had left, trapped in this place while the centuries passed, swayed at the edge of the red pit, each rocking with a rhythm of the harsh, vicious hum that filled the room and echoed from the ceiling. When your Greatmamae Haeve, Mamae, and you stand around your fire for the Banalhalam prayer, this is how the women of the red eye were arranged around the pit: each across from the other, facing in towards the light.

Fen’Harel placed his walking staff on the ground and lowered to his knees. He pressed his forehead to the cool earth. “Please,” he begged, “I am so sorry.”

Then General Lilta entered the room behind him, and the Wolf Who Rends the Worlds smiled, sad but kind, the heartbeat in his palm beating faint, but still warm.

From across the pit came a strangled shout and Lilta was driven to her knees beside him.

The magic that surged between them - united at last - was stronger than the magic of the red weapon that imprisoned Veves in eternal worship. The magic seared across the bard’s brow, cheeks, and chin. Lilta’s face was similarly illuminated. Down their necks and around their shoulders, continuing down their backs: eyes, eyes, and more eyes, red like the eyes of the Titan. The magic of the soul’s mark grew and pulsed, brighter and brighter, the song of love coming from nowhere and everywhere and drowning out the hum of the red weapon.

It grew and grew, the very air seeming to tremble, until with a loud crack and a snap of cool, rushing air the power of the soul’s mark broke the red curse keeping Veves captive. The bard cried out, coughed, and stumbled back from the edge of the pit, disoriented and starting to cry. Lilta sprinted to her side. She caught her love as she fell, bundling her close in her arms. “Vhenan?” the General begged, desperate, and Veves laughed weakly, then joyfully, reaching up and tracing the lines of Lilta’s soulmark - identical to her own.

“You came for me,” Veves said. Her voice was hoarse from the song she had been joined to, but when they kissed the magic that coursed between them was powerful healing magic, and Veves grew stronger in her beloved’s arms.

The magic of the soul mark had disrupted the spell trapping Wisdom as well.

“So you have come back, little Wolf,” she said, her voice very tired as she wandered over and sat next to him, her movements heavy.

The Player, too, was freed for a moment. She strode to Fen’Harel, past the lovers tangled in each other’s kisses, and when she reached him she yanked him up to his knees by his collar.

She slapped him across the face, hard, the hit slamming his chin and cheek aside. “You selfish, mad, foolish cur! You stupid ass! If you had only killed me when I’d asked, the Titan would have sunk into the earth. But now the song has been allowed to grow too powerful, and the Blight has seduced those who war above. It cannot be stopped except by one way.”

“I know,” Fen’Harel said, coughing and touching his jaw tenderly. “I have arranged for when the song tears apart the worlds.”

The Player smacked him again, and he accepted the blow.

“There will be no healing for the worlds after the song is sung,” she warned.

This, the Dread Wolf knew. Because the Evanuris and the Forgotten Ones must be trapped in the realms Beyond, he knew that passage to both the Void and the Fade must be eternally sealed.

He would _never again_ step physically into the Fade.

He would never again hope to find his love - except, perhaps, one night in dreams. For his spirit would forever wander, searching for her. He knew what must be done.

She would be trapped in the Beyond.

There were so many elves who worked in the fields, who went home each night to their _vhenan_ or their _vhenans_ , bound by heart-marks, holding their children close. He would not let them suffer for their leaders’ pride and greed.

Not again.

“I know,” he said, mourning and accepting. “But the People must be safe. I know they will thrive, they will endure, free of those who would seek to rule them.”

Fen’Harel went to the edge of the red pit and looked down at the Titan’s eye. It was sorrowful, looking up at him.

He nodded, bent his head, and called upon all his might and power: the strength of this realm and the realms beyond, the physical world of his childhood, the Fade - the home of his heart and choosing - and the Void, land of his blood. Fen’Harel wielded the full power of all of these realms’ magicks. He drew them to him, let them use him; his form filled and twisted by the strength of all of this power. The music of the Titan swelled around him, and the song crashed up and up, magic layered upon magic, songs joining and shrieking and harmonizing, then falling apart; a towering cacophony, cresting all at once into a fierce, sublime crescendo.

Veves and Lilta held each other close as the light shone so brightly over them. Wisdom sat, impassive as ever. The Player opened her arms wide, her smile grim, accepting the end of the Titan, and witness to the rending of the worlds.


	10. Sleep

Fen’Harel had not wanted to live.

But he had wanted Veves and Lilta to live, and so when his consciousness broke the surface of nothingness, and he found himself alive and flat on his back in the dirt, his head hanging over the side of the now-empty pit, the first thing he did was carefully roll over and struggle to his hands and knees, crawling to where the women held each other.

He reached out, his hands shuddering weakly. He felt breath puffing lightly from their noses and mouths. Relieved, he leaned a heavy hand on Lilta’s shoulder. She stirred as he turned away.

There was still some light remaining in the ropes in the pit; it was pale, sickly blue now, and fading. There was no sign of the Player. Wisdom sat where she had been seated when the great magic had ripped apart the realms. He felt it: the worlds pushed apart from one another. All of the Eluvians would be broken, and the paths out of the Void crumbled into dust. The numbness of this new world washed over his exhausted body. Fen’Harel pulled himself to where Wisdom sat, and then curled in on his side near her knee.

_I will never hold her now,_ came the thought, dull, as he hugged his arms across his chest.

The mark on his palm was still and cold.

_Monster,_ he thought as he closed his eyes tight. _No better than Elgar’nan. You have destroyed everything._

Everything.

“Mythal,” he rasped, some time later, when he had the strength. “She never wanted me to find my soul, my heart.”

“Much good finding hers did her,” Wisdom said.

“It was selfish.” He cleared his dry throat, but it only made him cough. “Cruel,” he croaked. “All my life she manipulated me for her own ends. She never cared for me.”

Wisdom was silent.

“It was her ultimatum that set me on the path to this place. I was rash. I know that… but I was scared. Of her, of being hers. Her slave,” Fen’Harel spat, his eyes glowing with the arcane light of too much magic, the last vestiges still pulsing through his body, as his temper flared. “I am glad she’s gone. I hate her. I always hated her.”

Wisdom only looked at him.

“It is easy for me to forget,” she said, “how young you still are.”

Fen’Harel coughed, laughing, and tried to push from the ground, tried to rise to his feet - but his whole body felt heavy. He collapsed on his side, his chest rising and falling rapidly, his head lolling in the dirt.

Then he felt something strange at the crown of his head.

Wisdom gently smoothed back his hair. Her hand felt oddly solid, her touch on him warmed with magic. 

His eyes fluttered closed at this soft touch. He moved his head as much as he could into her hand, encouraging her slow, rhythmic strokes. He whimpered, involuntarily. She kept her touch even. He could not remember ever being touched like this - in kindness.

“Oh, Wolf,” she sighed. She asked, “Who did you think ordered me to show you the path to your heart’s longing?”

He froze beneath her hand.

His eyes darted to her. He was helpless at her feet. Wisdom looked down at him, her face revealing nothing.

“You knew what would come to pass,” he ventured, hesitant. “You knew, and still, you led me to the door.”

She nodded, a brief look of something like misery passing over her face. “It was not wise, this course of action. The door should have remained sealed. But Mythal learned that entering the Fade was the only way you would find your love; I told her, when she demanded knowledge of the future from me. But I counseled Mythal to keep you from this path. This path would lead you to the Fade, and to your love, and to the end of worlds. I knew.” The light around Wisdom’s feet and eyes flickered and snapped. And where Fen’Harel should have seen the healthy green glow of Wisdom’s mana, instead he watched with horror as the green gave way to purple, crackling and bright. Wisdom shuddered. “I fought against the change. But I knew you would rend the worlds to save them, and I knew the way was not wise, and still Mythal bound me into her service. It,” her voice cracked. She shivered. He did not have the strength to push away from her - the true form she had been concealing lumped and spiked beneath the surface of his friend’s familiar face. “It hurt me,” she ended lamely, and he heard the weakness and fear in her voice.

“Wisdom…” he held her wrist, her hand still heavy on his head.

“No,” she shuddered, and shook her head. “No.”

He gripped her wrist tighter, made her look down at him. Laboring, he got his knees under him. Her form shifted and wavered, purple light bending around her, distorting his vision of her: now Wisdom, sitting patiently, then now, grotesque and warped, slumped and turned against her purpose, the spirit hidden behind that guise: Pride.

He raised both hands and touched her gnarled face. 

“Why?” he could only ask.

“For all you would give the people, and all you fought for. Their freedom. When Mythal learned of these things when you were still very young, she knew it was right for you to one day know love, little Wolf. It was not _wise,_ but it was _just.”_ Wisdom shook her head. “The Mother’s nature was true.”

He looked down. Tears threatened. He both regretted his words and did not regret them. He felt filthy, and tired, and uncertain about everything.

He cried because his friend was dying, and because he was the only one remaining with the power to lay her to rest.

“What is it that you want, Fen’Harel?” Wisdom asked, softly.

Fen’Harel looked up at her through his sorrow. He knew she could only counsel him once more.

“I want,” his face twisted, and his shoulders hunched, and he realized he was going to be very alone soon. The mark in his palm was cold and lifeless. He felt like a man who had done unforgivable things, like a man who did not deserve what he still brokenly, hopelessly wished for. 

“I want my _vhenan,”_ he whispered.

Wisdom looked at him with pity. She touched his hands with her own. She took a labored breath and closed her eyes as she looked deep within her. She struggled, saying, “Your heart is far away in dreams, little Wolf.” She opened her eyes and gave him a sad, heavy half-smile. “Go to sleep, now,” she said, and the spell started to do its work.

“I give you your freedom,” he answered. He fanned his hands away from her face, dispelling, with a gesture, the bindings that held Wisdom to the physical realm. Her spirit lifted and dispersed, green and purple mixing in the air. She was gone with a sigh.

The last lights faded.

Fen’Harel knelt and this last of the great spells pushed through his veins. It drew him into a heavy sleep. 

\--

When his General and her beloved awoke, it was with great effort that they learned how to bring fire to this realm from the Fade. The cavern was dark, lit only by the weak flames they finally managed to conjure. Raising up the flames and casting the light about, they discovered their king. He was asleep, and he could not be roused.

It was Veves Longlegs who carried the king out of the red temple. It was Lilta Noon who defended her along the now-wild paths, and shouldered the king when Veves grew too tired.

Their travels are a tale for another time, _da’len._

They brought Fen’Harel to the place that had been prepared for him to spend the wandering sleep, _uthenera,_ when the time came for him to lay down his crown. The place was long-abandoned, and its location long-forgotten. Some say it lies in the south, at a temple our ancestors called the Place of Pride. Other say the king’s final resting place lies to the north, under a hill in the wild wood where our beloved Arlathan once thrived. And we of the coast know that the Wolf Who Rends the Worlds sleeps in his bower set into the cliffside, looking out at the sea that was once a great opening to the Beyond. We do not fish there because the water is tainted by demons the sleeping king calls from the Fade in his dreams.

Lilta Noon and Veves Longlegs sealed the King of Nightmares in his bower, so we honor them when we leave the offerings at the Dread Wolf’s altars. They knew that the ages would make Fen’Harel vicious and cruel, wandering the Beyond with hatred in his heart for all who find love. For the slumber of ancients can only be broken by the kiss of one’s _vhenan_. And of course, the Dread Wolf’s beloved was trapped with the gods in the heavens. His own doing.

Fen’Harel slept, and did not wake.

He dreamed, and became the monster he believed himself to be.

Go to sleep now, _da’len._ And do not play with Vinan, Vunina’s daughter, tomorrow when we trade with Clan Lavellan. Remember this tale, and keep yourself safe. For Vunina Lavellan’s daughter is tainted by the Dread Wolf’s malice, and I do not want his gaze to fall on you.


	11. The Exile on a Stormy Day

Vin knew that she had to find a sturdier shelter than her small cloth tent, and she also knew that she was stubbornly avoiding the most obvious solution to this problem.

She spun her dinner in her hands: an apple. She couldn’t dip into her dried meats yet. She’d need them for winter, or at least until she was far enough away from the human settlement to hunt without attracting too much attention. She nibbled at the last sweet edges of the apple’s core, then stared at it glumly. She considered eating the core, and weighed her future hunger against the the bitter, acidic unpleasantness of such a small extra portion. 

She wasn’t quite desperate yet. 

Sighing, she lobbed the core over the cliffside and watched it disappear under a breaker rolling to shore.

She knew she had to move.

The sun was low in the sky, gripping at the dark boil of angry clouds, ominously red, stretching over the whole horizon. It was going to be a miserably stormy night, and out beyond the line of the reef Vin could see where waves had started to knock up on each other, wrestling the water in fits. She could barely hear over the rush of wind.

She swallowed, shouldered her pack, and stood.

 _It’s just an old tale,_ she told herself.

 _Yeah,_ a voice inside her replied bitterly, _an old tale that got you run out of your clan._

If there was a Bringer of Nightmares, Vin guessed he would be laughing at her right now.

It was her own fault. She should have never told Berral about the wolves she heard howling at the edges of all her dreams, but as a _thirty-two-year-old man_ you’d think he could handle a little superstition. At least the last thing she’d expected was to watch her betrothed _literally run_ back across the camp to his parents’ aravel, blubbering about the _Dread Wolf’s malice_ and the _Roamer of the Beyond_ and all that crock of shit that had haunted her whole life.

Why had she _told_ him?

 _You wanted him to tell you the wolves mean nothing, that it meant nothing to him, and that the eyes you sometimes see in the lake or the shine of your blade aren’t real and he loved you anyway,_ her mind supplied. Fair. The man you were going to spend the rest of your life with. It would have been nice if he’d had some faith in you.  


It had been a test, she knew. She’d tested him. Stupid. She’d wanted to know. She’d wanted to know his mettle.

She hadn’t gotten far. Berral’d scampered off practically pissing himself with fear after just a casual mention of the howls. They’d made quite the scene: him throwing himself behind his Papae as she stalked after him, incredulous, him shouting, “You were right,” and “She’s Fade-touched!” and “The Render’s got her!” and Vin shouting back, “You coward, you stupid ass!” until Deshanna had had no choice but to catch her around the arms and proclaim, for good, that Vinan, daughter of Vunina, was a danger to the clan, inviter of demons, marked as a demon of the Dread Wolf’s horde, and banished into the wilds of men.

Vin sighed and pulled her pack up on her shoulder. It was for the best that she hadn’t been able to elaborate, to explain. Her whole clan would’ve probably killed her right then.

Deshanna had met her at the edge of the summer lodging, sighing as she handed over a bag of supplies, her own knife, and an apology.

“I’m sorry, da’len. Ir abelas. I think we both know that your fate has never fallen in with the Dalish, Vinan. You’ve made it so long, made us all so proud… But… You must seek a life elsewhere.” She gestured back to the camp. “You almost made it work, da’len. You were close. But it just wasn’t meant to be.”

Vin had taken the knife, staring at the intricate metalwork on the hilt to keep the tears from blurring in her eyes.

“Did my parents want to come see me?” she asked.

Deshanna sighed. “Vin.” She’d taken her hand before Vin could pull away and traced the birthmark that marred her palm. Her hands were soft and wrinkled. “Our gods still speak from where they are imprisoned. You may not believe -” she continued when Vin snorted, “- but this is the truth. It is not a kind fate, but one is speaking to _you_.” The Keeper shook her head. “But you cannot hear him here. You must go where you can.”

“But I -”

“Far away from here,” Deshanna finished sternly, and something in Vin just crumbled. Thirty years she’d fought to be accepted. She had no more will to fight this battle, so she took the food and the knife and left without another word.

She’d crossed the prairie, then the marshlands, stopping off in a town and skirting its alienage, then quickly moving on. Numb and tired, she’d travelled aimlessly - or so she thought. It didn’t take long to realize her steps had brought her true to this inevitable, frustrating goal.

The rumor was that he flew from here each night on his great dragon. He stole the halla and set brush fires in the center of camps. The northern clans said that he brewed potions, cackling deep in his lair; potions that turned children against their parents, making them rebellious and cruel when they grew too big to carry. From the east she’d heard a tale about him mounting Dalish women who wandered into the woods at night, made them thick with child.

Vin snorted.

 _Right._ Like an angry god personally cuckolding dozens of warriors away at the hunt was more likely than what was _really_ going on.

She’d heard Fen’Harel’s legend herself, of course, and was privately of the opinion that, even in the stories, he sounded really too pathetic to have amassed _that much_ malignant energy. Seemed like a lot of work for a guy who was supposedly taking an eternal nap.

And besides, he didn’t exist.

He was not sleeping in the cave in the cliffside below.

The stairs were old and slippery. She tried to tell herself she was descending these steps in search of shelter. An old cave, with a door - if it wasn’t already home to bandits, it would be a perfect place to wait out the storm. The wind was picking up. She had to clutch the wall to keep her balance when a particularly strong gust blew straight up from the beach, whipping sand against her clothes and into her eyes.

She was just looking for shelter, she told herself, firmly.

She was not risking her life crawling down these final stairs on her hands and knees just so that she could scream at some stupid, nonexistent god.

As she ducked onto the wide ledge at the bottom of the stairs, she caught her breath and felt the first drops of rain starting to fall - heavy and hard. The wind was cold. Vin shuffled back into the opening of the cave, and her back came up against something solid. She whipped around and saw it was - a mirror?

She circled the strange mirror, rapt and gently brushing its frame. Its surface was cracked, but she was sure she’d heard of something like this before. It almost looked like what the Keepers described in their fables, but those were just tales. As Vin stared at the mirror’s surface, what lay behind her came into slow focus in the fading light. She gasped and turned, gaping in disbelief.

What they’d all said was _true._

There was a door sealing the cave tunnel from here. And the huge painted shape on the doors matched, _exactly,_ the birthmark on her left palm.

She had spent so many years trying to convince her family and her clan that they should hold out hope for her. She’d thrown herself into being helpful, made herself as indispensable as possible. And after decades - she’d mostly won them over. Or at least, she thought she had.

Looking at this ancient door, she knew all that effort had been pointless.

Fen’Harel’s Tomb had been here far longer than she’d been alive, yet the glyph carved in the door matched her birthmark completely.

No Dalish would ever trust her.

 _Stalker of the Beyond and personal pain in my ass,_ Vin thought fiercely, feeling a lifetime of struggle crashing over her. She felt suddenly, absolutely furious.

There was no way in Dirthamen’s _piss-stained asshole_ she was staying here for one night, or one moment longer.

Vin snarled at the door and turned on her heel. Then she rocked back as a roar of thunder shook the cliffside around her.

“Fuck.” She stumbled to the wall as another clap shook the cliffside - she had never felt thunder shake the earth like this before. She bit down a rush of uncertain fear.

Lightning followed. More rain. She looked out at the storm, scowling.

She wasn’t going back out there tonight.

“Are you kidding me?!” she shouted, answered by another crack of thunder followed close by a strike of white light that made her stumble back away from the entrance.

Fists clenching, her eyes finding the door again, Vin felt herself running before she realized her feet left the ground. Carried by rage, she stopped in front of the door and pulled her fist back high overhead. She slammed her fist onto the seal of the doors.

She meant to shout, “Open up!” and probably any number of curses, but she was strangled on the words.

As soon as her fist touched the giant rune, the door exploded.

Green magic blasted her back. She felt herself flung backwards through the air; instinctively, she brought her arms up to shield her head and cried out as light blinded her. She hit the ground and tumbled, reached out to catch herself, hit something solid and put her weight on it, and then fell through. It felt as if she was falling off of the cliff’s edge and as she fell, her only thought was, _“Am I supposed to have a last thought?!”_

When she came to, the pain of the blast was concentrated in an unbearable ringing in her ears. She sat up slowly, coughed, and then gagged. When she spit, her saliva got near the ground… and then floated.

Vin sat up and stared at the rotating ball of fluid, feeling ill again. She touched her wrist tenderly to her mouth, pulled away blood, and felt like something was wrong with her hand. Her head felt fuzzy. She couldn’t quite place what was off. She groaned, cradled her head, and looked up.

The sky was green.

“What is…?”

Unbelievable. That’s what this was. This place was not unfamiliar. But she had never thought to walk here physically. Or had she been knocked out…? But… no. This was not like the Fade in her dreams. 

Her dreams.

Vin closed her eyes, tight, and begged, for the first time, to hear the sound of wolves.

Silence.

She wasn’t dreaming. She was really here.

_How?_

Pain lanced through her palm. She opened her eyes again and was startled by the sight of her own reflection distantly to her right. The mirror, standing some way off. Her face in her reflection was lit by eerie, green glow that seemed to be coming from the ground. Vin looked down and realized what had felt so off about before. 

The palm of her left hand had been torn open. Green light poured from a wide gash on her palm. 

She stared at it blankly.

“You’ve got to be -” She struggled to stand, scrambling in the gray dirt.

That’s when the spiders saw her.

She stared at them. They were huge. 

As one, the pod skittered towards her.

Vin screamed, turned, and ran for the mirror, the sounds of dozens of huge legs pounding into the dirt behind her driving her on, blindly, for the mirror. She felt the crawling sensation of the horde gaining. The pain in her left hand flared.

She heard a howl, then, and part of her felt with a twist of relief that this couldn’t _possibly_ be real, that this _must_ be a dream. Without knowing exactly why it felt right to do so, she reached the mirror and pressed her palm to its cracked surface and, for a moment, the glass congealed into one whole piece. Then it promptly lost its solidity, and Vin fell through to the other side.

The howling of the storm and the thick rush of the deluge falling on the sea greeted her. Vin scrambled up and looked behind her. The glass was still whole. With a sick twist in her gut, she heard the clicking of her pursuers, and watched as spider arms reached through the mirror. She screamed again, turned, and ran the only place that made sense: straight through the doors of the ruin. _How were they still intact?_ It didn’t matter; the great doors had been blown inward by the blast, but, groaning with the effort and straining to put all her strength into the push, Vin managed to swing the great doors shut. They closed together with a resounding clap, severing a giant spider leg with a sickening crunch.

The hall inside was desperately cold and dark.

Vin realized, however, that she would not need to look for a light.

 _This is way worse,_ she thought to herself as she examined the magical light that had replaced her birthmark.

Before, at least only the Dalish would have shunned her. But this? This was a beacon to human, dwarves, city elves alike that she should be feared, locked up, probably killed on sight. Now she was, what, fused with some sort of stupid, insane rune? Because that must have been what did it, some kind of old wild magic accidentally triggered when she’s touched the rune. She felt herself panicking. Where could she go now? Who could get this off of her?

 _Breathe,_ she instructed herself sternly. _Breathe. You are capable and you can handle this. Whatever this thing is, it let you push your way into the Fade. You aren’t possessed. At least I don’t think I am. Not yet. Probably._

Then it occurred to her that giant spiders were just as likely to nest in this dark long-abandoned cave and Vin gulped and looked around, waving her hand up tentatively to see what there was to see.

But this… wasn’t a cave.

Or it had been, at one point, but the interior had been worked, masterfully, so that the walls were smooth. And they were covered in gorgeous, abstract paintings. Vin had never seen craftsmanship like this. She went to the wall and touched it, marvelling at the designs.

“Woah.”

As she followed the paintings, which, though cracked and faded, seemed to tell familiar stories, Vin saw that up ahead, at the top of a long staircase, there was a soft, golden light.

Not certain what pulled her forward, but with a strange feeling pounding in her chest - almost like excitement and anticipation, but touched with uncertainty - Vin climbed the stairs up towards the light.


	12. Home

What made her do it?

Years later, Vin wouldn’t know how to answer this question. It would be posed to her by curious rogues as she curled up next to the fire in some inn, or by a fellow-at-arms when she knelt in the field and soothed the confusion of some demon whose crossing through the Veil had twisted its spirit.

She only knew that when she saw him lying there… he looked peaceful.

He looked beautiful.

At first, the rational side of her knew he must be dead. She fervently denied that this man could be a Dreamer in the eternal sleep of her ancestors. The _uthenera_ was a myth. And she couldn’t even start to accept that this could be, could truly be, Fen’Harel himself. 

A god? 

No. Impossible.

And then she saw him breathing, so she was forced to accept that this might, in fact, be an ancient elf in _uthenera_.

But that didn’t mean he was a _god_.

Grimly, she worked to rationalize what she was seeing, plainly, before her. This tomb must have gotten its name from whoever this was. A misplaced identity, an old noble mistaken for _the_ Fen’Harel. Who never existed. And the mark on the door…? Well, who knows how long he had been sealed here. Perhaps the door had been closed and marked with the rune later, much later…

Her mind clambered for explanations, staunchly avoiding the very apparent truth of this moment: Fen’Harel slept on a simple dias of stone. His form was illuminated by the soft golden light shining from the ceiling above, lights that shimmered softly like a memory of stars.

Even as her mind tried to rationalize what she was seeing, her spirit was already far away.

She was touching his hand before she realized she had crossed the room. She didn’t realize that her hand stroked his, feeling his warmth, her fingers folding around his. She didn’t realize how much this simple act felt like waking up, looking around and finding oneself, unexpectedly, at home.

Her alarmed thoughts slowly faded away. Her mind floated in a soothing, empty place, all her fears quieted and sent far away.

She absently scooted up on the dias and leaned over him, curiously watching his chest rise and fall.

Her fingers brushed his cheek, illuminating the sharp lines of his cheeks, his full lips. She smiled to herself idly, feeling light-headed, the hair on her arms and legs and the back of her neck standing and shivering; in her soul, she felt happier than she’d ever remembered feeling. The room was quiet. She couldn’t hear the storm outside. Instead, there was a rhythm in her heart, a sudden, chanting hum rushing through her whole body. She felt compelled, infused with a deep feeling of peace, joy, and rightness, and she wanted to cry. These ranging chords within her soul thrummed and filled her; she remembered this song, vaguely, with a sudden recognition, from every night in her dreams, a background to the howls that she’d heard since she’d been old enough to marry. She remembered humming it half-remembering when she woke, as she sharpened her blade or washed her clothes. This song now pulsed through her body. It vibrated in her legs, made her head swim. She felt flushed and yearning, reckless; she wanted to do anything, _anything_ she could to follow the call of that song. When Vin leaned down and whispered, “Fen’Harel,” she kissed the sleeper’s lips.

The adversary of her people, the trickster who’d locked the gods away, the roamer whose evil steps thundered in each nightmare - his lips were warm and soft.

His hand tightened around hers, and he moaned against her lips, a hand slipping behind her head as his fingers threaded through her hair.

“ _Ma vhenan,_ ” he murmured, his voice trembling.

Vin jerked back and stumbled away from the dais, untangling herself from his embrace. Fen’Harel’s eyes slowly, groggily opened.

“Uh…” Vin supplied, looking around with her heart pounding. She had just… kissed him, like that? Furious and confused, she tried to stop the pathetic bleating of her soul - the strange, alien tug inside her heart that urged her to go back to this man and hold him, to cradle his head on her lap and let him lay himself over her. Vin shook her head violently, trying to clear it.

It didn’t help.

The ancient god Fen’Harel was swinging his legs over the edge of the dais, rubbing his face with the heel of his hand and looking around the room, squinting and clearly bewildered.

“I thought -” he started, then started coughing.

Vin backed to the edge of the stairs.

“Ah,” he said again, when he could speak, “Who… tell me your name, spirit? I dreamt that I awoke, and I thought, for a moment…” She watched, then, as his face fell, examining his own hands. “I am awake,” he said hoarsely.

Then he looked up at her, and his face was filled with the deepest, most wretched sorrow she had ever seen.

Her heart twisted, a great and terrible pain wracking her whole body.

“I’m sorry!” she cried out, and turned, and fled.

“Wait!” she heard him call after her.

Her feet pounded down the stairs as she heard him try to call out again, the call swallowed by another fit of coughing.

She cleared the final four steps in a leap and darted down the dark hallway, lighting her way with her palm.

When she reached the doors she accidentally stepped on the severed spider leg and yelped as it crunched underfoot. She jumped back, her fists clenching and unclenching as she stared at the doors and tried to think, tried to weigh which scared her more: the horde of giant spiders beyond the doors, or an angry god behind her in the passage who could flood her body with pain with a look, and who was probably enraged that she had woken him up from his eternal slumber or something.

Spiders. She could handle the spiders. Vin hadn’t done battle with any gods lately, and she suddenly realized that today was not a good day to start after all.

There was a flash of bright white to her left, and her new mark fizzled as the god stumbled to his knees beside her, emerging from a smoky cloud of light with a dull thud that shook the Veil around her.

“W-wait -” he stuttered weakly, trying to regain his feet and failing, falling back to the floor.

No fucking way. Vin wrenched one of the doors open and ran out into the cave, ducking past the mirror, which had to be an Eluvian after all, and let herself feel a moment of relief that the spiders had apparently left. They must have gone back into the Fade? Or…

As she rounded the lip of the overhang and stepped out into the storm, Vin careened to a halt.

Apparently unfazed by the rain, the giant spiders had decided to climb up around the cliff face and the stairs. She was soaked through by the pelting rain and just managed not to scream, but they must have sensed her running because, as one, the creatures rotated and skittered back down towards her.

Vin ran back into the cave entrance, pulled Deshanna’s dagger from its sheath, and took up a fighting stance.

He was at her side shortly after, and when the first spider thrust itself towards her, he threw himself in front of her, casting a protective barrier around her that caught them both in its light, then ducking so she could reach over him and sink her blade into one of the creature’s eyes.

She took the opening without a thought, then returned his defense; they fought off three more spiders in this way, joined in an instinctive, violent dance.

And then the rest of the horde caught up to the fastest members, and the mouth of the cave was dark with their bodies, and Vin looked to the man barely able to stand beside her. She knew, by the fearful, desperate look he gave her, that nothing they could do could stop this from being the end. Their only hope was to run back to the doors, but they couldn’t possibly get there fast enough.

“No!” he shouted, and she was startled when he grabbed for her hand. “I have to know,” he said, panicking, fumbling to pull her sleeve up. When he saw the glowing mark in her hand, he blinked at it, his face twisting in confusion and disappointment. 

“What?” she asked, barely able to hear herself over the descent of many legs upon then. And then, with everything happening so quickly, she thought she saw something that looked like recognition flash across his face.

He jerked her arm up at the oncoming horde, and she felt magic sluicing out of his grasp and into her palm.

The air in front of them screamed and a bright pillar of green light flooded out of her palm, slamming into the monstrous wall of spiders. She could barely see past the great light; their bodies contorted. He supported her arm, his face twisted in a fierce snarl, his eyes sliding to hers. She stared at him, stunned. The brief look he gave her revealed rage and hurt, then he quickly looked away.

He dropped her arm. The light died, retreating again to a quiet, gentle glow in her palm.

Some parts of the bodies of the spiders still remained, but for the most part the creatures had been disintegrated in the blast.

Vin shakily stepped forward. She looked at the limp body parts, then down at her hand.

He wasn’t looking at her when she looked at him.

“How did you know?” she asked, numbly.

“We possessed such magicks in my time,” he answered, hunching forward and fiddling with his hands, studiously avoiding her gaze. “Magic that could be used such, in battle. Magic that could,” he breathed with a great effort, “awaken one from one’s _uthenera,_ breaking the great spell that causes the eternal sleep.” She couldn’t tell why this would make him almost cry, but he was looking away from her, clearly hoping she wouldn’t notice that he was on the verge of tears.

“The Anchor on your flesh is of incredible make,” he continued lightly after moment, still not looking at her.

“Uh… thanks,” she said. “I think it almost killed me.”

“You must be a powerful queen, to wield such power,” he nodded sagely.

Vin swore her jaw dropped. She… had nothing to say to that.

She scrambled to think of what to say, already starting to edge away, past the eluvian once more. One had to be careful when saying anything to the trickster, she remembered, ages of advice swimming in her memory. Be certain of will, always loyal to the Dales and… and what else? She fumbled for the old stories, not wanting to get caught out by some trick. It was one thing to be angry at a nonexistent god; it was entirely another to have one fighting beside her, angry to be awake, and not knowing that she’d kissed him, apparently. He thought the mark in her palm - the Anchor, he’d called it? - had been what had woken him up.

 _And, yeah, that was probably it,_ she lied to herself, a deep part of her knowing the truth. _Weird rune. Stupid magic. That’s what did it. Not…_

And then the Bringer of Nightmares bowed to her. He righted himself with a grimace and a hand on his stiff back.

“I lay in dark and dreaming sleep while countless wars and ages passed. I hoped to catch a glimpse of my soul’s heart. But I never found her,” he said sadly. He looked out past her at the storm. “The last of the great spells has been cast. I cannot enter _uthenera_ again. So it is finished.” He sounded choked again, and he looked away. “I will never find her; I must wander in this waking world, and endure.”

Vin realized he was staring down at his hand, and she followed his gaze. What she saw there banished every last shred of nervousness that had driven her from his side.

Her uncertainty turned, and she found her anger again, waiting for her.

“How _dare_ you!” she exploded.

He startled and looked up at her, wide-eyed.

“How dare you! Ass. You - you _fucker_. Sure, you’re a god? _Fine._ Just smite me, have it done with, you’ve done enough anyway.”

He only stared at her.

He was very close to naked, now that she had a moment to notice. He was only wearing woven smalls, and, standing, he was so tall compared to her. How could he stand after centuries, maybe thousands of years, lying on that bed? And his shoulders were broad, and if he had slept for ages she had no idea how his arms could still look strong, or his belly be so lean, if soft, and his legs, his thighs…

Vin swallowed, yelled, “You have _ruined_ my life!” and she realized that she had never seen this man before _in her life,_ but he was, in every way, _familiar._

It was like she had seen him in the surface of every pond, in the icicles that hung from the aravels in winter, and whenever her shadow had passed a mirror. It was like she had heard his voice calling out every night, plaintive and seductive - a call coming across her dreams like a song, like a promise - everything forgotten upon waking.

He seemed stunned by her words, confused and lost, uncertain what to do. As the rain pounded onto the sea below, Vin tried to hold back, grasping herself around her chest, hugging herself tightly.

“You made me lose everything,” she said, brokenly, and she realized that this man did not recognize her, had never seen her before, and had _no idea_ what trials she had lived under his shadow.

Still, after a moment, he collected himself, and simply nodded, sadly. “I never meant to hurt you,” he said, genuinely despondent, having no idea in what way he had harmed her, but shouldering her blame and anger as his due. He just accepted that she must hate him, and Vin remembered that even in the stories he was never depicted as anything but mournful for the rending of the worlds. Deeply sorry for all the damage he must do.

He turned and walked away, his steps slow and resigned.

He apparently had no intention of even following her, much less of smiting her.

Vin’s heart dropped.

She crossed the cave and grabbed his hand.

He stalled, his expression confused and bleary as he looked back at her.

“What is it?” he asked, sounding tired, but not resisting.

She turned his palm over and saw, clearly, the mark there.

It was identical to the mark that had for her whole life up to this point marked her own left palm.

She didn’t hesitate. She lowered her lips to his palm, and kissed his mark there, reverently.

“Don't,” he said in a weak, pained whisper. “Don’t,” he said again, more sharply, when she didn’t stop. She pulled away and reached up to touch the side of his face, and despite himself, his eyes closed and he leaned into the touch.

She felt a sudden flush of heat, and resolved that she should go. She had to go. This couldn’t… She shouldn’t be here.

She moved to pull away, but was stilled by him speaking.

“I paid the price of the world for this,” he said, closing his hand. “It was meant to guide me to my soul’s heart. But instead, in seeking it, I led the realms to ruin. I had hoped that by giving up everything… I wanted to find her, one day, in the wandering of _uthenera._ I would forfeit an eternity of life if I had the chance to hold her. When I learned that time does not exist in the Fade, and all things occur simultaneously, that it is only our _perception_ of events which sets the march of memory ever onward; I thought such a blessing meant I could certainly find her, for if she had... if she had perished when the realms were sundered, I might find her before that day. I learned to control my dreaming with full consciousness. And even if I were only a dream, if only... she could forgive me. Even if we might never touch, I thought that, if only I could see her, speak with her… Learn who she was…” 

His voice cracked, and Vin understood that this was no giggling maniacal trickster god of nightmares.

“The mark,” she asked, “how was it meant to guide you to your heart?”

“The mark is one of the oldest magics of the Elvhen,” he said, opening his eyes and smiling down at her, the first spark of happiness he’d shown since waking. The way his lips quirked made it hard for her to breathe. A light of interest glowed in his eyes. “All of that will have changed, of course. In my wandering and speaking with dreamers and spirits, I have learned that none manifest these marks among the Elvhen people now. Things had changed very much.” He took her glowing hand in his and traced the mark. “This, for example. Familiar magic, in such a new form.”

“This?” Vin looked at her hand. “I haven’t had this for a day. I got it,” she gestured, “from your front door.”

Fen’Harel looked down at her, baffled.

“My… door?”

He looked back and, for the first time, seemed to see the rune, suddenly illuminated by a strike of lightning.

“What?” he asked, confused.

Frustrated, Vin snapped her fingers to command his attention. He turned back to look at her. She pointed to his hand and he followed her gaze.

“That mark, however, has ruined my life.”

He sighed sadly. “I know. It has ruined all lives, for the worlds paid the great price of my reckless -”

“No,” Vin cut him off, “No. No. Not all lives. _My life,_ specifically. My life.”

She backed away from him, then paced at the mouth of the cave, shaking her head. This… there was no way. No way. This could not be real. This could not have all been some kind of accidental, ancient magic thing.

She lifted her hand again and showed him the glowing mark, stabbing at it with a finger. “You can’t see it anymore, because it’s _under_ this, whatever _this_ is. But I was born with that same mark you’ve got on your hand, only on my hand.” She couldn’t read the expression that came across his face then, only knew that he was stunned, and she continued on as if afraid she’d lose her nerve if she stopped. “If this really was your mark, and there really was a god, all this time, making my life miserable, I don’t understand why,” her voice was getting louder, she knew, and she realized she was probably shouting again, but she didn’t care. A roll of thunder followed the lightning, more distantly, but still strong enough to shake the cliffside around her. “I don’t understand why you never answered my prayers, _not once,_ because I asked - I _begged_ for you to hear me, _so many times…_ ”

Her legs couldn’t support her anymore. She dropped to her knees, falling back into the heavy curtain of rain and not caring at all. She drew her legs up to her chest and vaguely hoped that lightning would just strike her and end it all before she was forced to process everything that had happened to her today.

 _Coming here was a mistake,_ she thought, miserably, dropping her head to her arms, rain pouring down her hair and cheeks, hiding her tears.

His touch was so light on her head, at first she thought it was the rain.

He knelt before her, rain slicking his bare skin. He tucked his fingers, gently, under her chin, and when she looked up she thought, ridiculously, that he must be cold.

He smiled at her, tender.

Then he wrapped his arms around her, and held her tightly in the rain.

 _“Vhenan?”_ she heard him ask, muffled, against her shoulder.

“I _guess_ ,” she lamented, her nose stuffed.

His deep chuckle felt like poetry and the choppy sea below, his voice quavering on a few lines of ancient Elvhen she did not understand.

And then she felt like her whole body was vibrating, shaking, the blood pounding in her veins, Fen’Harel holding her and pressing himself to her, closer and closer; she slipped her arms around him and the rain soaked them both. He held her like he was a man who had never been warm in his life, who longed to hold the sun; and she was the sun, and the feeling of coming into tune with the man who held her was wonderful, and painfully overwhelming.

She whimpered and bucked up against him, and he brought his lips to hers, kissing her fiercely. His knee pressed between her legs. She arched against him. He moaned, tongue darting almost delicately against her lips. She pulled away sharply, breathing fast. She realized he was breathing as hard as she was, pressing his forehead against hers.

What she was feeling was here, named, and certain: irritating, completely irrational, strange, and more powerful and good and right than anything else she’d ever felt in her life.

Love.

She loved this sad wanderer; this reckless man who had torn apart worlds. He had walked the Beyond for literal ages, seeking, and wanting, hoping only to catch a glimpse of _her._ He'd just... been looking in the wrong direction.

And she wanted to just love him.

“What are you smiling about?” Vin breathed against his lips, and he laughed, shaking and trembling as he held her. She clung to him. She kissed him again, feeling like every home she would ever need was here, right here, in their arms around each other.

“You found me,” he whispered, when they next caught their breath, and he lifted her, finding strength from the sweet shape of her lips, from the warmth of her body, and the soft tug of her rain-soaked hair under his gentle hands. “You found me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Mark of Fen'Harel is complete! I wanted very much to thank both [buttsonthebeach](http://archiveofourown.org/users/buttsonthebeach/pseuds/buttsonthebeach) and [Katalyna-Rose](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Katalyna_Rose/pseuds/Katalyna_Rose), for your constant support through the writing of this fic, and again of course so much gratitude to [RedInkOfShame](http://archiveofourown.org/users/RedInkOfShame/pseuds/RedInkOfShame) for help in outlining this fic in its entirety, and for your patience and incredible strength as an amazing beta reader and friend, and thanks to [FyreinFlair](http://archiveofourown.org/users/FyreinFlair) for prompting this fic and giving me the bones for the Fae AU! I'm so thrilled to send this work out there, and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Maybe a little bit of happiness in your Solavellan hell. <3
> 
> I'm on tumblr at [tel-abelas-mofo](https://tel-abelas-mofo.tumblr.com/). I fill Solas/Solasmance prompts and occasionally host giveaways. The fic you just read was a giveaway win for a kudos milestone I reached on my Solavellan fic [Slip](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8877271/chapters/20352001)! Stop by and chat me. ^.^


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